I’ve been fortunate to have spent the last 12 months supporting a portfolio where they’ve invested heavily in cultivating and sustaining a strong and unique culture. The benefits of this investment have led to some pretty special individual and team achievements, higher levels of trust and an energised vibe across the floor. As an agile coach, working within a group that grows and prioritises its culture makes my job a lot easier as it provides a stable platform to help teams experiment, learn and improve.

Culture is becoming a powerful success ingredient of an organisation, but what exactly is it? Culture is more than what your company wears on its t-shirt or what boutique beers it stocks in its bar — it’s deeper and more subtle. It’s intimately tied with trust and communication, something that is easily felt, but tough to describe. I like how Richard Perrin sums up culture as the ‘…sum of values and rituals which serve as ‘glue’ to bond members of an organisation.”

This made me think — how would I go about pitching the benefits of building and investing in the company’s culture? Here are my top four:

1. Increases revenue

It has been proven that a strong organisational culture correlates with greater revenue. A seminal study and book titled Corporate Culture and Performancefound that companies with strong, performance-enhancing cultures achieve revenue growth of 4x, and profit growth of over 750x versus companies that don’t have strong cultures.

2. Builds a unique value proposition

Trying to recreate another organisation’s culture is extremely difficult challenge. Toyota was so confident that their culture could not be replicated that they obligingly opened their doors and invited their fiercest American competitors to tour their facilities. Building a strong culture translates into a sustainable competitive advantage, providing companies with powerful brand and customer leverage.

3. Helps acquire and retain the best people

The cost of employees leaving is staggering. Not only are there the potential time and customer impacts, studies shows a cost to the organisation of anywhere between 200–250% of the employee’s annual salary*. With the rise of millennials in the workforce, acquiring and retaining top talent is becoming more difficult. People are expecting more from employers than just their basic salary — they are demanding an organisation with strong cultural foundations, somewhere that supports work/life balance and aligned to their social beliefs*. A strong culture that is underpinned by values that support its employees not only act as an opportunity to acquire the best people, but also to hold onto them.

4. It is relatively inexpensive

Building and sustaining a strong, vibrant culture is relatively free in financial terms. In Digital, we were constantly hacking our culture using the simple T-shirt to see whether it would impact behavioural changes and more often than not, it did - quickly and cost-effectively.

However, let’s not fool ourselves here — there is a significant cost in time, commitment and focus. Building and sustaining a strong culture is not easy. It takes discipline and focus to define a company’s values and ensure that these values are being lived out deliberately and consistently.

Culture is a company’s most valuable asset and as such, we need to treat it as such — prioritise it, cultivate it and invest in it.