In today’s edition of Tips from the Experts, we asked three business professionals to tell us their top 5 tips are for fostering a great company culture.
Sarah Petty, Founder of Joy of Marketing
1. Figure It Out
Take the time to get crystal clear on your culture. I took this step for granted. I knew I was building a different kind of business, one that gave people flexibility and exciting challenges but also one that moved faster than the speed of light. That combination definitely isn’t for everyone and it wasn’t until my team and I sat down and got clear on these core values that it illuminated the conversation we needed to have with candidates in the future.
2. Communicate It
Yes, it is important to communicate your culture to new hires but it is also important to reinforce it often with your current team. I started working with hiring expert, David Bonney, with hiretofit.com, and he taught us that once we defined our culture, we needed to all be talking about it in the context of work as often as we could. For example, when someone brings recommended solutions to the team instead of just the problem itself, that person is praised.
3. Be Religious
Like having a commitment to your logo (think about the power of Coca-Cola’s timeless white cursive logo that has been around more than 100 years), we must be militant about staying true to the culture. Work-life balance is one of our top core values and we can talk about it all day, but if we see someone on our team starting to drift into workaholic mode, we must reinforce that culture and reach out. This person has either taken on too much or simply has too much on their plate, and we need to reassess their workload.
4. Eliminate Without Guilt
To build the right team around a well-defined culture, don’t be afraid to eliminate. Every resume you receive has been polished by someone so it is easy to feel like a candidate should stay in the pool simply based on credentials. But, if he or she isn’t a cultural fit, eliminate them and don’t feel bad. Both of you will find a better match.
5. Hire for the A
I was convincing myself that we had to accept an employee who wasn’t exactly right because there just wasn’t an A player out there looking for the job we had. After making that mistake, I found that it is much more painful to get a B or C player in a position than to hold out for an A player. Top NBA teams don’t go around looking for someone to fill the last spot on the bench because they know it doesn’t make anyone better. They go for people who can come in and be an A player in their role.
Alan Jones, Partner at Infinite Group
Given enough time and money, your competitors can duplicate almost everything you’ve got working for you. They can hire away some of your best people. They can reverse engineer your processes. The only thing they can’t duplicate is your culture.
All culture is made from the same five components: behaviours, relationships, attitudes, values and environment.
In sustainable, winning cultures, behaviours are inextricably linked to relationships, informed by attitudes, built on a rock-solid base of values, and completely appropriate for the environment in which the organization chooses to operate.
It’s the context that makes it so hard to duplicate a winning culture. Because every organisation’s environment is different, matching someone else’s behaviours, relationships, attitudes, and values will not produce the same culture.
Five tips that encapsulate components of culture follow the model BRAVE:
- Behave: The way people act, make decisions, control the business, etc.
- Relate: How you connect. The way people communicate with each other (including mode, manner, frequency and disagreement), engage in intellectual debate, manage conflict, etc.
- Attitude: How you win. Strategy, posture and approach.
- Values: What matters? Purpose and principles. This is often the critical pivot point as it gets at why people do what they do. People follow engaging leaders for a while, but they commit themselves to a meaningful and rewarding purpose or cause over time.
- Environment: Where you play. External choices around markets and competition. Internal choices around layout and formality.
In the end, a BRAVE culture is one that is ready to change in terms of will and skill.
Kate Taylor & Lucy Sheridan, Consultants at Good Work People
1. Ask People What They Want
By taking time to ask those you currently work with, and those who may join your team, the simple question of what they want from working with you, demonstrates that you are committed to listening, and putting something back.
Be aware that this shouldn’t be an honour reserved solely for the management team. Speak to every single person in your company. If you can’t do that face-to-face then set up ways you can have this dialogue through activities such as surveys and polls which encourage everyone to get involved. Open dialogue and communication is 101 for creating a brilliant culture throughout your business.
2. Keep Your Vision As Your North Star
Be clear on your vision, which means that you need a north star by which everyone inside and out of the company can guide themselves. It allows for a quiet self-confidence and space to play so that everyone within the business can create with flow and freedom. It also creates focus in times of stress or chaos, in that under an agreed vision, your team can pull together to see through the good times and the not-so good.
3. Be Clear On Your Values
Know what you stand for and live it every day and in every way. Your people will walk across hot coals for you if they feel part of a team with a clear identity and shared beliefs. If you are able to show passion and commitment to what you believe in, and why you do what you do through purpose, then your people will reflect that passion and commitment back to you.
Many people will have been burned by career experiences where a company had no tangible values so demonstrating to your teams that you stand for something is a key way to attract and retain the best talent.
4. Allow Time for Time Out
Success is no longer measured on profits alone. Employee well-being is the new ‘green’. Looking after your people on a holistic level is the key to company spirit and the energy levels of those working within it. Looking after people means healthier working practices, a reduction in sickness and staff turnover, and an increase in productivity and motivation levels. We’ve heard of companies setting up meditation rooms to reinforce time out as a protected commodity. More businesses are bringing in holistic practices such as mindfulness into the workspace to allow people to take a breath and connect to the present moment to avoid stress and reactive responses.
5. Have Some Fun
Investing in some good fun means that you are building a culture with a healthy balance and a true spirit of work hard/play hard. This doesn’t have to be a grand, sweeping gesture which costs a lot. Asking your employees what they want encourages a spirit of ‘can do’ and creativity. Inviting teams to come up with their own ideas keeps energy levels high and mixing up the talent across departments is a further conduit to innovation and cohesion, bonding people together.
Thanks to all our contributors for their valuable advice. Do you have any tips on how to foster a great company culture and spirit that you would like to share? Feel free to leave a comment in the section below.