Start Here: Culture as a key driver for companies who care about their people

This past Saturday, together with Ruby Nguyen and the MoveUp team, we delivered an interactive online session about Culture in the Workplace.

Why now?

Because it’s our collective belief that in a post-COVID world, focusing on strong company culture is key to attract and retain your people.

When employees started working from home, and when the normal flow of business was disrupted, the question became: how do you prevent disengagement — and resignations?Especially in a market like Vietnam, where many organizations compete for the same talent and where retention is already a big issue.

Companies have realized that they need to design work experiences for their employees, as the power has shifted from the employer to the employee. For many of them, the question now is: “how do I create a work experience that will make people excited to work for me? how do I attract and retain the best talent?"

Start with Culture

Culture is the “attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by a group of people.”1 As a recent Harvard Business Review article stated, when everyone was remote, distributed, disconnected, the only thing that could really keep people together, was the company culture, driven by strong engagement.

In fact, this was true long before the crisis: companies with a strong culture have superior results. A famous study done in the early 90s where researchers showed how amongst 200 companies, the ones with a strong culture, performed much better than those without a strong culture. For example, in net income, new hires, and revenue growth.2

A strong culture, when you have something that connects your people, helps you in attracting and retain the best talent and directly drives strong business results.

So where to start?

For this, let’s take a look at Daniel Coyle’s book “The Culture Code.” In this book, he explores what makes great teams, by studying the world’s most successful teams, from companies like Google and Pixar to sports teams, universities, and even the army. And his key finding: it’s all about culture.

In Daniel’s words, culture is … “when people add up to more.” When the combination of a group of people, is more than the individuals together. And he shares that to create a strong culture, you need to do 3 things:

1. Build Safety

2. Share Vulnerability

3. Establish Purpose

Let’s look at those 3 in a bit more detail.

Build Safety

Safety is important because human beings are social creatures that take our cues from those around us. We’re not talking about physical safety here, like locks on the door and deep cleaning in the times of COVID-19, although that definitely. We’re talking here about the totality of feeling safe.

Because when we feel safe and secure, when we belong, then we can relax and not be using our energy to be hyper-vigilant for signs of danger. This is a finding that was confirmed by Google’s famed “Project Aristotle.”3

“Psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.” — Google, Project Aristotle

When COVID hit, did your teams feel confident that you would take care of them, no matter what? If the answer is yes, then you have successfully created a sense of safety.

If not, how can you make people feel safe? The book mentions over 10 ways to build a sense of safety. Tips include “Overcommunicate your Listening”, “Overdo Thank-Yous”, “Eliminate Bad Apples” and “Pick Up Trash”: work alongside your most junior employees.

One recommendation that truly stands out is to be really careful about whom you hire. A great example of this is Zappos, who proactively offers $2000 dollars to new employees if they decide to leave after their 2 months onboarding.

Sounds crazy? Maybe, but it makes sense when you’re trying to build a culture of safety. Employees know that newcomers who stay, are truly committed and feel more secure in investing in new relationships.?

Share Vulnerability

The second element to creating stronger cultures is to Share Vulnerability. Being vulnerable means opening up, exposing yourself. And this skill builds upon Safety. Because when we feel safe, we are able to let our guard down and be more vulnerable and authentic.

And that’s important in a company’s culture. When we are not spending our energy on hiding our weaknesses, we can devote more energy to performing at our highest level together.

Just think about that for a second. A lot of people will play a kind of character at work. When you’re masking who you really are, and how you really feel, you consume a lot of energy. Energy, that you could otherwise spend on doing great work.

One way of sharing vulnerability is by leaders modeling the right behaviors. A great example is this letter from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella which he wrote to all of his 150,000 employees during COVID-19.?

In this letter, he didn’t try to be stronger than he really was. While he still made people feel safe, and not worry too much about the company and their jobs, he was also remarkably open and vulnerable.

Letting leaders model vulnerability helps create a culture of openness and a strong culture between all employees.

Establish Purpose

Creating Safety and Sharing Vulnerability are important in creating a strong company culture. And they perfectly pair with the third key: “Establish Purpose.”

Organizations achieve the greatest success when they become more than the sum of their individual members, such that they are a true team striving together for a mutual purpose. Or, as Daniel Coyle says: “High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal.

Companies with strong cultures constantly remind employees where they are now, and where everyone’s going together. These reminders of the organization’s purpose remind people why they are working together and gives them something to keep going for.

Purpose is so powerful because it’s so similar to what we as individuals strive for in life.? As Aaron Hurst writes in his book The Purpose Economy, we all want to serve and contribute to something greater than themselves.? Purpose delivers that to us.

Still, a lot of companies that have developed a Purpose, get stuck. They have something on paper but don’t know how to make it something that actually lives inside the heads and hearts of their people. One strong way to make your purpose come to life is by using artifacts that you keep repeating.

Express delivery company DHL, for example, has a beautiful turnaround story that started by embracing and strengthening their company culture. As their CEO Ken Allen wrote in his book Radical Simplicity, DHL’s mission of Deliver Everything That Needs to Be Delivered was to be driven by 4 key strategic pillars: Motivated People, Great Service Quality, Loyal Customers, and Profitable Network.

DHL wanted their employees not just to understand, but to embrace and live. So what did they do? They turned to music! What’s more memorable and catchy like a song? They took their key strategic pillar of “Great Service quality” and linked it to the song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Then, they used this song at every meeting, in every town hall, so that their employees started truly living it.?

Building a strong Company Culture: start here

Having a strong Company Culture, the attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by the employees in your organization, is key to attract more high-quality talent, retaining your employees, and for your teams to create better work. This all of course directly impacts your business results.

Are you ready to start creating a strong culture? Start by finding ways to build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose.

Companies that care about their people — we are always here to have a chat and help you design a better workplace experience, starting with the company culture. Book a free consultation directly here.

Sources:

1. Matsumoto, 1996
2. James Heskett & John Kotter, “Corporate Culture and Performance,” 1992
3. New York Times, “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” February 2016
4. Harvard Business Review, “Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit–And You Should Too,” May 2008
5. Seattle Times, “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to employees on coronavirus crisis: ‘There is no playbook for this’,” March 2020
6. Delivering Happiness, “Make Happy Work Playbook,” 2020
7. Aaron Hurst, “The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World,” April 2014
8. Ken Allen, “Radical Simplicity: How Simplicity Transformed a Loss-Making Mega Brand Into a World-class Performer,” 2019

Read the full post on our WorkingWell blog.