By Jonathan Rowe, CMO at nCino.

According to a recent survey, 83% of employers believe attracting and retaining talent is a growing challenge.

If your financial institution is among that 83%, then you know addressing this challenge will have a profound effect on your company’s culture and operations, as well as its ability to meet customers’ changing expectations and remain competitive in the industry.

At nCino, culture is an integral part of our recruitment strategy. Since 2012 we’ve successfully hired and onboarded almost 600 employees in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, while maintaining a 95% retention rate. Throughout the hiring process, we provide numerous cultural touchstones that emphasise nCino’s values. The result is a clear image that current and prospective employees picture when they think of our company’s culture, and an ability to market that culture to key audiences.

Below are three ways nCino leverages and brands our unique culture to recruit and retain top talent, as well as suggestions for how your financial institution can do the same.

Identify and uphold your organisation’s core values. 

A financial institution’s mission drives its services and products. What it values, on the other hand, guides its employees’ behaviours, interactions and attitudes and forms the backbone of its culture.

At nCino, we are steered by six core values—Bring your A-game; Do the right thing; Respect each other; Make someone’s day; Have fun; and Be a winner. These values aren’t just feel-good slogans touted by our executives. Rather, they are woven into every process from recruitment to sales to product development. For example, an interviewee might be asked a question about when a candidate had to do the right thing in a tough situation, or to give an example of a time when they went above and beyond to do something nice for someone else. Office perks, such as a football table and ping pong, encourage people to have fun and interact. Even our quarterly awards align with these values, such as the Umbrella Hat Award, which is given to an employee who “keeps shining bright, even through cloudy days.”

By clearly identifying, constantly articulating and faithfully upholding your company’s core values, you can build a unique culture that makes your employees excited and proud.

Use tools to tell your cultural story effectively, both internally and externally.

At most companies, the recruiting team is found within the human resources department. At nCino, we do things differently, by having recruiting as a function of the marketing department.

When our recruiters “sell” nCino to candidates, they leverage a variety of marketing tools to highlight, promote, and celebrate the culture of the company with the goal to “hire the best”. The recruiting team works closely with the creative team and the public relations team, both of which are also part of the marketing department. These relationships are particularly helpful to ensure that the branding and messaging the recruiting team uses to attract potential employees matches the overall branding of the company, which results in a cohesive story and a stronger culture.

If your financial institution has a strong company culture in place, make an effort to spotlight it in your hiring process. Treat recruiting like a marketing function and leverage all available tools to tell your institution’s and employees’ stories effectively.

Integrate new employees into the company’s culture at every stage.

Regardless of the reason, letting an employee go is costly and disruptive for a business. The hiring process at nCino is comprehensive and takes time to ensure the right fit for the company, but also the right fit for the candidate. Candidates interview not only with the manager and team they’ll be working with, but also with people from other departments and at all levels of seniority. This gives the hiring manager the opportunity to collect a wide range of feedback, and creates a holistic view of the candidates and how they’ll fit in the company as a whole.

Once hired, all new employees attend a week-long boot camp, an intensive onboarding process that introduces them to each department and helps them understand how all the parts of the company work together. Every February, nCino hosts a company kickoff at our U.S. headquarters, which is a time to celebrate our accomplishments and set goals for the coming months and year. The kickoff is an important cultural touchstone, which is why we fly in employees from our UK, Canada and Australia offices—it’s the one time the entire company is under a single roof, experiencing and enhancing our culture together.

While some of these activities might seem frivolous at first glance, they’re the types of unique traditions that create a workforce of happy and engaged employees who are passionate about their jobs, focused on delighting customers, and committed to an organisation’s long-term success.

I truly believe that employees are the most powerful representation of your organisation’s culture and brand. Celebrate what makes your institution unique, empower and reward your employees who best embody your company culture and leverage your marketing department to build a cultural brand by telling your story inside and outside the company. This strategy is one of the best ways to attract new and great talent to your organisation, as well as retain the current employees who make your institution great.