Say Thank You Already!

Say Thank You Already!

A Starting Point for Your Company Culture

A good place to begin is by considering the common features found in many successful cultures. While your company is unique, the most effective culture for your workplace will likely share many of the same characteristics. Consider how you would address each of these items in your own company culture.

A successful company culture requires several things:

1. Clear core values. One thing all successful workplace cultures share is a set of core values that are perfectly clear to all employees. What will your company values be? There are a variety of things a company can emphasize.

● Innovation and creativity

● Home/work balance

● Aggressiveness

● Results

● Casual or not?

● Team work

2. Respect. Respect is an important part of a workplace culture. This means respect between peers and between the highest-level employees and the lowest. Employees that feel disrespected quickly become disgruntled. The quality and quantity of their work suffers.

3. Communication. Open communication within the company fosters greater success. Again, this means between peers and between the various levels of the organization.

● Have regular communication across all levels. Company-wide meetings can be very effective if logistically possible.

4. Inclusivity. Significant separation between the upper level employees and the lower level employees has often been a source of friction. Establish a corporate culture that includes all employees from the CEO to the person that empties the garbage cans.

5. The culture matches the business and the employees. Different cultures are suitable for different industries.

● Banking is a traditionally conservative business. It might be hard to make a culture of jeans and golf shirts work.

● A tech company would struggle to find the right employees if it’s culture were overly conservative. Can you imagine everyone at a tech startup wearing a suit to work? Or a tech company that doesn’t value creativity and innovation?

● It’s okay to be innovative and push the envelope. Just remember that the culture has to support your business type, clients, and employees.

6. The culture needs to go from the top to the bottom. Everyone needs to be held to the same standards. In many companies, people look the other way when an executive fails to abide by the culture or rules of the company. This breeds dissent and anger.

7. Employee recognition. Positive work cultures give employees recognition for their accomplishments above and beyond the norm. This can take the form of monetary awards, additional days off, lunch with the CEO, or even just mention in an email or company newsletter.

● Regardless of the size of your company, find a way to recognize an employee when they do something exceptional.

8. Keep the employee’s goals in mind. No employee has the dream of working in a cubicle for the rest of their lives. Your dream isn’t their dream. It’s important to find ways to help your employees progress forward in life.

● Every manager should know his employees’ goals, whether it’s to learn a new software program, move into a sales job, or become an executive down the road.

● Strong company cultures support employees in the pursuit of their goals.

9. Employee feedback. Ask for and use employee feedback. You can’t be everywhere at once, and you don’t know the absolute best way to perform every job in your company. Your employees know things, and it would be wise to extract this information from them.

● Encourage your employees to provide regular feedback on all aspects of the company.

10. Transparency. This goes back to communication. Be as transparent as possible. The old mentality of, “You don’t need to know anything beyond what you need to know to do your job” is dead. Keep employees in the loop and be respectful. They can handle the truth.

11. Consistency. Consistency means it applies to all employees and at all times. If you’re willing to throw out your values during a mini-crisis, you don’t have a stable culture.

● The culture needs to come before everything else, or everyone understands that it’s all just smoke and mirrors.

Give these items some thought when crafting your own culture. Think about how you would implement each of these items in your company. What do you think would work the best for you, your employees, and your customers? Sketch something out on paper and think on it for a few days.

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

- Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company