What is Company Culture?

In a world where employee retention is a serious issue many companies are facing, company culture is often cited as the answer to employers’ problems in this arena. In fact, the term has become something of a buzzword with the job market shifting so that employers have compelling reasons to keep their employees happy.

Company culture might affect the bottom line, but it’s important to look closer than that. It also affects people. It makes for a better customer experience because it makes for more engaged customer service, enhanced innovation, and better quality products. It also makes for happier associates. As the guy at the top of the food chain, happier employees make my life easier, too. I don’t know about you, but since we’ve all got to go to work anyways, I figure that we might as well enjoy it. A great culture does that.

Company Culture Drives Employee and Customer Experience

When I think about company culture, it brings to mind recent experiences at a couple of restaurants near my house.

The first place, which has historically had problems with customer service, recently underwent an expensive renovation and upon reopening, it appeared to be a real hot spot. The new look was just plain cool, a really neat South Beach vibe. My wife and I went in there to have dinner a few weeks ago and found the same shoddy culture the place had exhibited before. The hostess, after letting us know it’d be an hour and a half wait, made it seem like it would be a burden to serve us. They are having staffing issues already.

There’s another place nearby that we also visited recently. It’s nothing special on the surface, just a regular ol’ restaurant. Once again, there was a long wait, but the staff was happy we were there. They welcomed us in and got us some drinks while we waited. Under very similar circumstances as at the first place and with little to occupy the eye, the staff at this place made us want to stick around and hang out.

The company culture at these two places are very different.

At the first place, it’s obvious based on the customer experience that the people who work there don’t get up and get excited to go to work. It’s a slog to them and that reflects in how they treat their customers. Regardless of their fancy new aesthetic, I suspect their business won’t improve much once the new wears off.

At the second restaurant, the staff obviously likes to work together. Their great attitudes towards their fellow employees and their customers show me they’ve got a positive culture. They’ll stand the test of time if they can keep that positivity up.

Achieving a Desirable Company Culture

There are articles everywhere about dramatic and oftentimes cheesy gestures the big employers are making to help improve their company culture. There are new-fangled nap pods and hip coffee shops being installed at forward-thinking companies across the country, but are moves like these really the answer to developing a great culture?

Sure, things like that might help bring employees together. There’s a lot more to it, though, and all at the same time, a lot less.

Components of a Positive Company Culture

There are several things that are required for a positive company culture in my mind.

It’s Visible

It’s important that you ensure that employees actually know what your core values are. The best companies put energy into celebrating and putting those values out there.

For example, at Holmes Customs, one of our core values is GRIT! We work hard, innovate, and keep chipping away at it until the job gets done. We promote with more conventional, marketing-material-type, methods, but we also act it out at every level of the organization. One example of this is everyone with available hands pitching in to get a big order out on time, where the IT department and Marketing team work side by side with the shipping department to just plain get the job done.

Ideally, companies hire and fire based on their core values. If one bad apple can spoil the barrel, one employee who can’t seem to get with the program can ruin a great work environment for everyone. The reverse of that is that each and every employee who lives and works according to those values helps promote the culture you want to see.

It’s Genuine

You can’t fake a great culture by writing down some policies in the employee handbook that make it seem like your company is a better place to work than it really is. You’ve got to really mean it. You’ve got to really love people and care about them.

The majority of people can sense a disingenuous person from a mile away and when leaders just pay lip service to their proposed cultural facets, you can bet everyone knows it.

In fact, when leaders say certain values are important to them and to the company but then don’t back up that statement with their actions, it seems to make for an even more toxic culture than if they’d just left well enough alone. No one likes to feel lied to; no one likes to feel like their boss is trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

My mom told me when I was 10 years old that actions speak louder than words, and let me tell you what, that’s never more apparent than while developing company culture. It starts from the top down and if the team on the bottom of the pyramid and at every level in-between don’t buy into it, the atmosphere won’t ever change.

At Holmes, I work hard to make sure that our employees know I really care. I block out parts of my day to just walk around and speak with everyone in the building. I get to know them and their families. It seems to be working for us, too; we’ve got 5 employees who have been with us for more than 30 years.

It Promotes Teamwork

In a healthy workplace culture, it’s evident that you’re a team. The entire staff is on the same side. There’s no place for blame, just working together to achieve your goals.

Teambuilding is important at Holmes. A lot of the time, our charity work is our most effective teambuilding. Every year, we give several members of the staff an extra week of vacation to go to Haiti to do charity work with Haiti 180. It changes them for the better. They bond with one another and they better embody our culture. The experience comes back with them and makes them into the kind of leaders we want to employ.

Our culture is one of service and when everyone on staff is willing to serve one another and the community and world at large, it helps make us into one big happy family. The execs at Holmes put on a barbecue a few times a year. We serve the employees food that we cooked ourselves. It’s a symbolic gesture that says, “You may work for us, but we’re not above serving you.”

It’s Evolutionary

Company culture isn’t static; just our wider culture, it evolves. It’s ever changing.

You’ll see a lot of people blaming Millennials for the increase in demand for positive workplace culture. They job hop, they demand too much, they can’t just be happy that they’re getting a paycheck.

You could put your nose in the air and try to avoid hiring them or you could do some research and find out what they really want. Find out how to make them happy. It’s actually not that difficult if you genuinely care about your employees and place their well-being first.

Here at Holmes, we adjusted. We went from a rubber stamp manufacturer (booo-ring by today’s standards) to a customized product business.

Millennials want purpose so we opened up opportunities for our employees to make a real difference through our larger charity work (Haiti 180) and through other local organizations.

We recently put on an end-of-school party for our local Boys and Girls Club chapter. I threw it out there that I needed some help planning this after the area director came to me about it. We set up a basketball game, planned a kickball tournament (we schooled those 10-year olds, by the way), We cooked hotdogs and snow cones! One of our #Holmies set up a slip-n-slide. Altogether, twelve #holmies volunteered their time and effort to put together this bash to help these kids celebrate the end of the school year. It was so much fun and those employees formed a bond that they likely never would have on the floor at Holmes.

Seeing Culture in Action

This sounds a little morbid, but I know our company culture is working when something bad happens. They really come together to help out when something goes wrong. They pass around a hat to collect money for a coworker who was in a car accident or who is dealing with a medical condition in the family. Heck, I’ve even seen them take action to help people who don’t even work at Holmes any more!

I care about the employees here and they care about each other. I don’t have to initiate these things. They simply jump in to lift up their fellow employees.

In Conclusion

I’m a firm believer in taking care of employees and providing a fun place to work. A positive culture translates to success and profit. The real ‘mission’ for most businesses is making money, but when you place that secondary to the people who work for you, that’s when you find real success.

At least that has been my strategy over the last 15+ years and it appears to be working.

Never take it for granted, its something that has to be real, protected and groomed every day!

Cheers!

Bryan