Corporate culture and stakeholder relations

A basis for the sustainable value creation of successful companies is based on involving the various stakeholders in their decision-making processes. Stakeholders can be described as those groups or individuals who are affected by or can influence the achievement of corporate goals (Freeman, 1984, p.46).

Employees have a special stakeholder role. If they are enthusiastic about their own company, they stand up for the employer with their name and reputation. Due to their internal perspective and experience, enthusiastic employees convey the company's concerns and values to other stakeholders in an extremely credible manner. The following quote from Richard Branson (founder of the Virgin Group) illustrates this for the stakeholder relationship between a company and its customers.

The enthusiasm of employees as brand ambassadors for their own company has an impact on various stakeholder relationships. For example, committed employees can build trusting supplier relationships with little monitoring effort. Furthermore, enthusiastic employees use their skills in company-specific volunteering programs to make a positive contribution to society.

The potential of enthusiastic employees is particularly evident in recruitment. Various studies have shown that the quality of applications is higher, there are fewer unsuccessful hires and the recruitment process is therefore shorter and cheaper. Social media solutions such as Eqipia enable employees to approach potential candidates across their company's entire stakeholder network quickly and efficiently.

Unique corporate cultures

In the Great Place To Work® benchmark studies, we regularly find that employees act as brand ambassadors when they are enthusiastic about a unique corporate culture. Such a corporate culture is based on employees' pride in their work, trust in their managers and enjoyment of working with colleagues.

A central component of the corporate culture is its core values. These must be communicated by the company through specific programs. If this is successful, enthusiastic employees will have a positive influence on relationships with the various stakeholders. In our analyses, the following three areas of practice have proven to be particularly influential for the development of a specific corporate culture:

• Recruiting & hiring: Even during the recruitment process, successful companies make sure that applicants fit in with the corporate culture. By conducting targeted interviews and observing behavioral patterns, recruiters ensure that an applicant represents the company's core values. Companies also specifically look for the ability to think and act in complex stakeholder relationships.
• Inspire: Successful companies enable their employees to experience a sense of purpose and pride in their own work activities through appropriate programs. In the IT and pharmaceutical industries, various companies maintain online platforms on which employees can present their specific projects. These platforms allow an exchange with various external stakeholders and thus promote the role of employees as brand ambassadors.
• Volunteering: Through skills-based volunteering, employees of a company can make their skills available to external stakeholders in areas where they are most useful. Programs already exist in the financial industry through which managers can volunteer their knowledge to non-profit organizations.

The above-mentioned areas of practice lead to a positive identification of employees with their own company. This results in brand ambassadors who can communicate the company's corporate culture to various stakeholders and form the basis for joint value creation.

Conclusions from the stakeholder view:

• Employees who are inspired by their own corporate culture are excellent brand ambassadors for the various internal and external stakeholders.
• The practical fields of "Recruit & Integrate", "Inspire" and "Volunteering" represent opportunities for creating shared value for and with a company's stakeholders.