Your people are what makes your business and finding the right people can be the difference between leading in your market and playing catch-up quarter after quarter. But it’s not just locating them, it’s getting them to want you. 

Most highly skilled professionals and technical specialists know their value and are quite happy to hold out for a job offer from a company that aligns with their values, goals and requirements. While remuneration, responsibilities and industry are always key parts of what attracts talent to a specific role, leadership and culture cannot be overlooked as the powerful motivator that it is. A company with the right leadership and culture can find itself punching significantly above its weight, attracting talent that would normally look for far more powerful positions at more renowned organisations. 

In this blog, Zoom Recruitment ticks off what’s so vital about leadership and culture, helping you better understand why these two abstract factors continue to have significant impact on headhunting efforts. 

The right leadership drives innovation & productivity 

Even the most driven, creative individuals need direction. Modern businesses only succeed when diverse groups of people are able to work together, often responding quickly to changes in the industry in order to be first to market. Achieving that requires switched on, strategically-minded people who can recognise emerging trends and motivate people to take action – in short, effective leaders. 

Effective leaders can thus be a significant driver of innovation and productivity – providing inspiration from outside the business to achieve the former, and realigning resources to achieve the latter. This get noticed – leadership’s perceived efficacy is one of the most discussed aspects of any business, and those on the look out for a new role take notice. Good leadership – and good press about it – can be an advertisement in and of itself for your business to the people most vital to it. 

Cultural alignment ensures you’re all pulling in the same direction

Any leader will tell you how hard it is to get people to change their behaviour. If employees are used to doing things a certain way and perceive it as getting results, they’re unlikely to want to change, no matter how many emails or policy changes you send.

Culture is a way to short-circuit this resistance. Rather than pushing them to change their behaviour, culture nudges, negotiates and persuades. When properly shaped and used, it can provide real, measurable value for the business, encouraging good behaviours without fostering the resentment that a direct order can sometimes create. 

It also gets people talking. Good culture leaves employees feeling good, and that gets discussed. For a sought-after professional, hearing a business in their industry has a great culture is one less thing they have to worry about going into an interview, giving you a big boost over the competition.   

Culture & leadership drive, shape and maintain each other 

Culture and leadership are inseparable and symbiotic, with changes to one by necessity informing the nature of the other. Leadership is charged with the responsibility of creating the culture in the first place, defining the values and vision that together form the foundation for a corporate culture. Equally, how this culture is shaped by the rest of the company exerts influence on the leadership, requiring changes in direction and composition as new skills and capabilities need to be added. As such, you need to approach both with the same level of care and attention if you hope to attract the best talent to your business. 

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