Culture has a heartbeat – after all we are the ones who create it. And so often, we fall into one of two buckets – culture champions who beautifully live up to our charge of maintaining a thriving ecosystem, or culture clashers who fall short and snuff out the life of the organization by muddying it up.
You’ve heard like attracts like. Well goshdarnit … that’s how you ensure you build a culture you can be proud of, because it aligns with your vision and your set of values, and whom you hire can perpetuate all of the good being done inside and outside your walls.
So, how do you grow your culture? You grow it by focusing on the “why,” “how,” and “who” of your culture. By prioritizing this, your culture will no doubt thrive.
Whether you’re a startup or a well-established firm, one location or an enterprise operation spanning continents, here are 10 tried and true ways to create an enviable place to work according to Entrepreneur editor Tanya Benedicto Klich:
1. Hold your team accountable to living the organizational values – choose right and see right being done. Team members who take responsibility for their thoughts and their actions contribute to a positive culture.
2. Make it a C-suite focus – when leadership at the highest levels drives cultural programming and process, everything for professional development to team retention stands to benefit. When leaders set the example, others will follow.
3. Weave values into your interview process – screen for what people find meaningful, what is their belief set? It’s important to determine what candidates have accomplished. It’s more important to understand how they think and feel as these will indicate their decision making style, behavioral tendencies, and best of all, their mindset.
4. Give the team an opportunity to feel ownership – how? Exercise transparency and when possible, allow them to participate in financially supporting the organization. Having access to information and being involved beyond the job itself deepens people’s emotional and physical investment in the company. All this does is strengthen your culture.
5. Connect everything back to vision – so why are we doing this? Say your vision is to make the world a better place. This becomes your decision filter. You can say to your team, okay, so if us making the world a better place is true, let’s talk through how investing half a million dollars into this sustainability project supports our vision. Every decision you make should support the big picture – otherwise, does it really connect to what you aspire to be?
6. Maintain a personal feel at the office – in other words, as company leaders, don’t lose your ability to be approachable. This is especially difficult when companies grow and instead of a conference room with 10 chairs, your quarterly meetings take place in an auditorium and as President, you need a microphone to ensure the person in the back hears you. No matter the size, it’s important for your people to feel like they can ask their leaders anything.
7. Incorporate cultural growth into your day-to-day life – whether it’s blogging about it, or proactively creating processes that directly affect your team’s experience at work, the commitment does not have to be big. But in order for it to work, you must be consistent. Set a goal and live into it. For example, if you want to make sure candidates have the best interview experience possible. Maybe you develop a committee, review current interview questions, discuss the steps before and after the interview, and brainstorm other ways to personalize the experience – then go implement and see what sticks.
8. Socialize – when you’re running a company, making time to connect and ensuring your passion trickles to everyone can be difficult. Sometimes the impromptu happy hours and casual hallway chats are immensely helpful. In other words, the informal meetings can result in deeper connections and instill the sort of enthusiasm we hope for in each team member.
9. Don’t be traditional … whatever that means for you – if you typically have three rounds of interviews with the same individuals, consider a different sequence, different players, or different locations. The options are endless – phone, video chat, in-person one-on-one, a panel, or the less popular and incredibly powerful, have the driver screen the candidate.
10. Celebrate the culture champions – this is when a little public praise is A-Okay or an unexpected thank you note. Or, or, or… whatever you deem necessary to acknowledge team members who are intentionally making the company a great place to be.
Curious what this looks like in real life? Look no further than Hollywood hit, The Intern. We watched it and thought the producers secretly visited eQ’s headquarters before filming. From bell-ringing to picnic style desk pods, their office environment and the palpable, energy felt a lot like home. Of course, what matters most are the intangibles – how the team thinks, feels and what they say in the community as entrusted brand ambassadors. You could also borrow their genius idea to higher the wiser – food for thought.
Have fun making your place hum, your heart swell, and your work family grow!
