Create a Sustainable Company Culture

How do you instill your corporate values and company culture in all of your employees?

You know there are hundreds or even thousands of organizations who have spent a lot of time and money on creating their corporate values or their vision and mission statements.

And yet if you ask many of their employees to recite those values or mission statements many of them won’t be able to do so.?

Often these values that sit proudly on the company web pages in their career section or those that are framed beautifully on the walls of the executive offices are nothing more than just words on a screen or words on paper...

These words and what actually goes on in the business are often very different. The challenge is most people aren’t even from day one of joining a company are aware they even exist or they were just told about them in the interview process or in some onboarding presentation with no depth to this subject and certainly no discussion on why they are important, let alone we want you to follow these...

You can’t expect to embed a culture or engage employees with your values if you do not live them, managers are key and they need to "show these values" and culture to their employees on a daily basis. No you don’t have to wear a T-shirt with these values or create daily affirmations to remind yourself about them. You just need to connect these core values with the values of what is important to each and every individual person in the company.

Your employees need to understand what they are, why they matter and how they can connect these values with what is happening in their lives right now.

For example the value of teamwork may mean something very different to a new hire with little work experience compared to someone who has been in the company for many years and is a highly experienced professional. A new hire's thoughts on teamwork could be how the team can help them learn and understand how to do their job in a productive and timely manner, the more seasoned individual doesn’t need that kind of support, works alone and not as a team, but knows that when required they can get the support they might need from time to time...

Values are like a great work of art on the wall in a gallery, we know it's important but how we see the painting and what we think about it will be very different. Is the Mona Lisa smiling or frowning? As they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"...

Work life balance is certainly going to be very different if you are perhaps single and have just graduated from school you may be so hungry to learn and absorb as much information as possible in your new job you don't care about all the hours you put in each day. Compare this perhaps to someone who has small children, a family who certainly may require to balance their working hours while trying to support their family at the same time...

One thing is clear you can’t embed a culture as if it is a set of rules, the law of the organization! Look at a very well known tech online retailer, huge annual turnover and yet spend incredible amounts of time on all their leadership principles in their interviews. What is being said and what actually happens on the ground seem to be two different things. Creating a healthy culture where people not only can repeat your values but actually "believe in them" will directly impact not only the tenure of an employee but their overall productivity and have a massive impact on your bottom line!

So where do you go from here? What is it you need to do to make these words become real?

How are you going to embed either a new set of values or remind your employees of the current ones! How do you embed a truly healthy and happy culture! How do you make this sustainable?

If only the people in the company at that time believe in them, what happens when they leave the company? Do you start from scratch?...

Either way, it has to start before they become your employee!

You have to create what I like to call the “Value 360 employee proposition”..: This needs to be an end to end process, that even after to leaving your company they still walk and talk as if they were your employee... That will also impact you long term, because after all what do you want your ex-employees to tell the world about their experience working at your company? We certainly know about the impact of all those painful comments on Glassdoor...Its very hard to fix a problem, after it has happened lol...

However before you begin this Value 360 prop' process you need first to embed this culture and values into your current leadership team, and this needs to start at the top too. If they can’t walk the talk, you going to waste a lot of time and money...

Making leaders responsible isn’t just done with leadership training you’ve got to tie their compensation into this process and you have to remove or even demote any leader who is not willing to toe the line! “You can’t put a bandage on a dirty infected wound”, it’s got to be clean first so it can heal, remove any poison or toxic people who can’t or won't comply!

Once you’ve got the leadership principles and required behaviors in place now you can begin your process of change to improving your overall company culture.

Start from the beginning of the employee lifecycle...

Your interview process is crucial to the success of driving a healthy culture, it needs to feed into the cultural machine. You can train new skills and develop employees, but you can’t train culture! They fit or they don't! Don't let the ones who don't fit in, otherwise you'll be in for trouble down the road.

A truly thorough interview process will include not only explanations on who you are, where you come from, your history, to who you are now and where you expect to go, but it also needs to include a cultural alignment process, with questions that help you understand their thoughts and behaviors, based on their experiences and work history.?

Too many of you ask, can they behave here? Are they going to enjoy working here! When you need to be asking how they work now and why they do or don’t enjoy their current environment. Look back not forward to know the direction you need to take!

If all that goes well, by all means have values training sessions, discussions during the new hire orientation process on your history and values, that goes without saying, but do not try embed culture after they've joined, that's just plain dumb... ??

Make sure you monitor a new hires behavior in their first 3, 6 and 12 months. Behaviors don’t change over night. It can take months or longer for someone to not only understand how to behave but appreciate and respect these common corporate values.

The longer someone has experienced something different outside the longer it will take for them to adjust to something new that you have...

Hold manager and team and even individual 360s often, do this openly not behind the scenes and share feedback in a professional and courteous manner.??Do this openly and you’ll stop the gossip and rumors. Gathering feedback is critical to see what issues might arise in future or make changes to the process and make improvements etc.

Award and recognize people who live your values!

Not just award their productivity! Award for teamwork, award for care and love of of employees, award people who bring energy and good vibes to the company! It doesn’t have to be a cash award, often a simple recognition of an employee will go a long way to not only keeping people happy but also making others want to join this cultural party ???

I am only touching on some points here. I am very passionate for the well-being of a company and I know that this well-being is based on getting as many people engaged in not only what we do, but who we are and what we stand for!

As someone who has some military experience, I realized from a young age that the overall group's success was on how we all worked together and how we all had a cause to fight for, to stand by!?

You know the old saying right? "A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link"...

If you want more ideas, talk to me, connect on LinkedIn with me! Also listen to our weekly Podcast for related tips & tricks around talent, people, career development and company culture ??

Thanks for your time to read my thoughts today!

Article written by: Simon Cropper