101: Building culture
Your office culture is what you can't see in a product brochure, an annual report or revenue figures. It has to do with the values and attitudes that shape your company and guide its operations. A company's culture can dictate why employees come and whether they stay. The key is to get everyone on board and make sure staffers are a valued, recognized part of the culture, and are not being dictated to. Here are three ways to ensure your office culture pays off:
Don't post plaques on the wall declaring the values. Seems counterintuitive, right? But in a blog post by Francois Nader at hbr.org, the Harvard Business Review website, putting those values on the wall can make them seem less important or somehow indicate that the goals have already been accomplished. “Values have to be internalized and lived,” he writes. It's more important to lead by example and give internal communication permanent attention.
Listen to your staff. Really listen. “People are not just productivity units,” says Tom Walter, CEO of Tasty Catering in Chicago, in an article at Inc.com. He advocates letting your staff know they matter and that their opinions are valued, for true company advancement. “The future is as secure as people are with working together,” he writes.
Hold an off-site meeting. You don't have to do trust falls, says Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta, a cloud-based enterprise management system, in a blog post at Entrepreneur.com. And it may seem like a waste of time and logistics to get everyone together off site. “Get employees who you think exemplify the culture you want to build and ask them ... 'What do you like about the current culture? What don't you like? What is culture, anyway? Does it even matter?'” he suggests. When employees are asked to play a role, everyone wins.
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