Defining a company's vision, mission and culture is a subject on which there are many and varied resources. In practice, however, very few of them really hit the nail on the head when it comes to translating the company's DNA... 

Some unquestionably successful companies have failed this exercise, like Disney and its ultimately uninspiring mission for a producer of children's dreams: "To be a world leader in the production and distribution of entertainment and information, through a portfolio of brands differentiating its content, services and products."

Using the example of La Redoute since its takeover by Nathalie Balla in 2014, we identify a few steps that could help you build a strong, authentic corporate culture: 

• Formalize the company's core values
• Creating a shared vision and culture
• Create and maintain a sense of belonging to a company

And if you prefer the video format, we've got Nathalie Balla in 2021 in an episode of the Remote Academy series.

Step 1: Formalize the company's core values

Basically, when we talk about corporate culture, it's all about revealing existing behaviors that reflect it on their own. Looking at the history of La Redoute, a nearly 200-year-old French company that came close to bankruptcy before bouncing back and finally being bought by Galeries Lafayette in 2017, Nathalie Balla quickly understood the need to act globally when she took over the business in 2013, for a symbolic €1.

But it also identified a risk at the time: that of falling into the trap of imposing values or a culture that it wished to translate to enhance the brand, and which would be too far removed from the experience of employees.

To ensure that she reflected the company's deep DNA, Nathalie Balla adopted a process that brought out the strong values and attitudes at work within La Redoute :

• Trust: this value has long been implicit at La Redoute, and its explicit inclusion in the company's attitudes reflects a need expressed directly by the teams. Indeed, even if employees felt they were evolving in an environment of trust, they sometimes had difficulty projecting themselves and being ambitious because of this lack of formalization. 
• Creativity: La Redoute is an innovative company that has managed to renew itself throughout its history. From its beginnings as a spinning mill, La Redoute went on to become a specialist in mail-order sales of balls of wool, and has gone a long way towards becoming an omni-channel retailer.
• Social responsibility: from its beginnings working with local balls of wool and Calais lace, the company's commitment to the influence of the Nord region has endured since its creation.
• Boldness: La Redoute is positioned in a highly competitive market and faces giants like Amazon, so boldness is a core value that is reflected in every project to propose innovative solutions and create its own competitive edge.

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Step 2: Identify a common vision, the "why". 

In times of structural change, rushing to find ways of getting employees to embark on the adventure is actually a false good idea, because it doesn't get to the heart of the matter. La Redoute began by opening up its capital to employees... and this was a failure, because the collective issue at the time was not so much to find "how" to re-engage teams in the new life of the company, but rather to define and clarify "why" they were committing themselves.

Defining a vision of success with partners

After the failure of their first initiative, La Redoute's management teams got together to define their vision of success for the corporate mission they were trying to redefine. 

Once they had aligned themselves on a global vision, the managers set up a "Sparring Board", a group of young employees under 35 whom they meet once a month. The objective: to define with them phrases that translate the company's vision and mission into simple language. Involving these employees from different professions and hierarchical levels was a way for La Redoute to ensure that the vision and mission would be understood by all.

The La Redoute experience is a good reminder that co-creation does not mean "total delegation". In fact, the company's leaders were the first to be involved in the process, to maintain control and avoid cacophony when it came to activating collective levers.

Involving the team so that the corporate mission speaks to everyone

Once the various options had been put on the table, all La Redoute employees were asked to vote for the corporate mission that best embodies the work our teams do every day and La Redoute's ambition to regain its place in the daily lives of the French.

After these various co-creation phases, La Redoute's vision changed from "Making beauty accessible" to "Embellishing the lives of families". In the end, the vision and mission were not reinvented, but simply formulated in simpler words that everyone understands, and for which it is easy to have a common definition across a company. 

By following this process, La Redoute's managers aimed to inscribe employees' contributions in the company's history, to ultimately align their day-to-day missions with that of La Redoute. Involving and working with the teams at every stage helped to unite the collective around the mission, with employees able to concretely identify its scope and the resulting business opportunities.

It remains to be seen how La Redoute goes about reflecting the company's values in the daily lives of its employees.

Step 3: Foster a sense of belonging and ownership of the corporate culture

Bringing values to life in everyday corporate life

What's important once you've defined the contours of a corporate culture, and what gives it its full meaning, is anchoring these attitudes both internally and externally to ensure its longevity. At La Redoute, culture infuses both the employee experience and the brand image conveyed externally.

1. In-house: the example of the job description

Creativity, a core value at La Redoute, is assessed as soon as the company is looking to recruit new employees. It is therefore explicitly highlighted in the job advertisement. 

Once the application has been submitted, the candidate enters La Redoute's recruitment process and is evaluated in several ways: 

• During the recruitment process, candidates are asked to solve case studies and simulations to test their creativity in real-life problem-solving or project management conditions.
• The recruiter then gives him his vision of success in 3-6-12 months' time, including "demonstrating creativity".
• Creativity is also one of the skills assessed by each La Redoute employee throughout his or her career, during annual appraisals and weekly reviews.

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In this way, even before taking up their position and throughout their career with La Redoute, employees are imbued with the company's values and assessed on these. In addition to being sought after in the talent La Redoute recruits, the company's values also forge its employer brand and strengthen the employee experience, with some talents attracted to the company precisely for its creativity, audacity or societal responsibility.

2. External: advertising campaigns

The reference attitudes defined at La Redoute have an impact on the choice of issues that communications teams decide to address, turning as far as possible to subjects that enable the brand to stand out from the crowd. On the marketplace market, La Redoute remains a small player (with a small budget compared to the giant Amazon, for example) and must therefore redouble its creativity and audacity to stand out from the crowd. The "La Redoute - Lou" campaign is a good example of this creative and contemporary spirit.

The spot, directed by Géraldine Nakache, features La Redoute with a story that embodies their vision of the family in the 21st century. It follows a growing blended family, a teenage girl who gradually accepts the arrival of her stepmother and gradually builds a bond. This storytelling helps position La Redoute as a brand that can meet all a family's needs, in line with its evolution over time.

Translating corporate culture into every collective ritual

1. Marking the highlights of the year

When she took over as head of La Redoute, Nathalie Balla wanted to perpetuate a tradition that is deeply rooted in the daily lives of every employee: that of annual greetings. The principle: at the end of the year, department managers get together with all employees to present not only their results for the past year, but also and above all their ambitions and objectives for the year to come. This convivial moment celebrates collective victories, makes employees proud of their work, and is another opportunity for leaders to embody La Redoute's strong values to unite teams.

2. Cultural ambassadors during weekly rituals

With the company's move to remote working in March 2020, La Redoute's management teams have identified the need to review the time dedicated to collective work to adapt it to the situation and respond to employees' questions and concerns: 

• Every week, managers organize a collective one-hour meeting with their teams to take stock of their activity.
• At the same time, to keep the company as close to the ground as possible despite the distance, the board members meet every week on Fridays and invite an outside guest to give a specific update on working remotely: customers, projects, people... This moment is led by the Director of Internal Communications and is organized in several parts to give the directors a voice and encourage transparency and alignment between the teams: 

• Part 1: The Sales Manager provides an update on sales activity.
• Part 2: The Customer Director reports on customer satisfaction and customer service performance.
• Part 3: The Operations Manager (who visits a logistics site) shows the logistics platform, which is particularly useful for those who have never been to the site.
• Part 4: Internal or external guest speaker on a specific topic. For example, the board had the idea of inviting a company director to share how he had managed the containment and the switch to telecommuting in his company, and to benefit from his feedback.

These adaptations were necessary to reassure teams and maintain the closeness that exists between La Redoute employees. In times of crisis or uncertainty, this type of team ritual reinforces the confidence of the workforce and keeps them engaged in a good state of mind, despite any shocks.

Conclusion

Developing a strong, authentic corporate culture is key to creating a working environment in which every employee feels at ease, identifies with the values conveyed, and develops a sense of belonging to the company. 

Involving the various stakeholders in formalizing the corporate culture is also important to ensure that the right set of values is chosen, i.e. one that truly represents the behaviors and attitudes observed within the company, from "lambda" employees to management teams.