10 Things I Know About... Company culture
10) You can't underestimate the importance of culture. People stay or go because of the strength of the connection they feel to your company. Culture is at the center of that.
9) Core values lay the cultural foundation. A company's core values play a real role in how people behave, and they should be defined clearly and emphasized regularly.
8) The cultural tone is set from the top. When management treats people and the company's core values with respect, it helps everyone feel aligned.
7) Creating non-negotiables creates a clear path. Your cultural touchstones need to be part of the screening process. If you hire someone and they don't live up to your values or respect the culture, you need to make a change.
6) Culture works best when it's a tangible part of your employees' lives. Think about ways to bring core values to life. At AAFCPAs, for example, we give every employee a community service day off. It's an opportunity for us to demonstrate how much we value their pursuits and our role as a team in the community.
5) Being consistent and transparent breeds trust in the culture. Don't be shy about sharing key drivers of growth and what success looks like. People have to know where they fit in and where the opportunities are in order to grow personally and professionally.
4) People feel invested in the culture when their development is valued. Focusing on training and education – especially for skills that may be tangential to the day-to-day job – makes people feel valued. We give every team member 100 hours of training over two years, and we recognize the need to balance out the emphasis on accounting skills with soft skills like communications, public speaking and building professional networks.
3) Great cultural strategies adapt with the times. Create a strategy that supports what you want to be and how you want to evolve. Then constantly monitor it to see how the workforce responds and whether the strategy needs to change.
2) Measurement tells the real story. Measure the strength of your culture by conducting regular employee surveys.
1) Culture needs to be authentic. Most important: If it's fake, it will break. Every time.
Carla McCall is co-managing partner at Westborough accounting firm AAFCPAs and chairwoman of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs. You can reach her at cmccall@aafcpa.com.
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