Workplace Culture: My Lessons for Creating a Great Workplace

One of things we do really well at Hancock Creative is culture. Your culture is what allows you to attract talented people and keep them longer than other organisations. It’s what allows you to keep a team pulling in the same direction and valuing the same things.

Let me be clear, by culture I don’t mean gimmicky things like table tennis and bean bags or some kind of unattainable Google-esque environment of free lunches and replacing your office stairs with a giant slide (although that would be kind of fun).

I believe great culture doesn’t have to be expensive, unattainable or difficult to maintain. It is available to every organisation whether you have 3 people or 300.

Here are some of my tips for creating a bullet-proof culture in your organisation:

Lead with vision, mission and values

I was first exposed to this idea of VMV by Jack Delosa, the founder of the Entourage. While we’ve evolved the concept and what it means for us at Hancock Creative, the heart of the message is still the same.

Our organisation has four key tenants:

-      Our purpose – what is the fundamental truth at the heart of our organisation?

-      Our vision – what is it we are trying to achieve in the world, that is worth fighting for?

-      Our mission – what does the day-to-day execution of that vision look like and how do we measure that success?

-      Our values – the four principles that are at the core of our decision making and help us bottle our magic as we grow.

As a team leader or a business leader, your fundamental purpose is to steer the ship with these key principles. To have everyone know them, apply them, make decisions with them and reconnect to them when they need them.

Encourage failure

This one will definitely challenge some of you. Surely as business managers we want more success, not more failure? I’ve discovered in the last 8 years of business is that when we are succeeding at everything and never failing – we’re also not growing, challenging ourselves or innovating.

Making mistakes is inevitable when you move quickly, try and test new things. Mistakes don’t have to be a bad thing. My biggest lessons in our business have come from our biggest mistakes. Making a lot of mistakes quickly allows us to iterate 50 times faster and get to the successful outcome much sooner than if we’d played it safe.

If you’re going to encourage failure, you need a zero-tolerance policy on blame. That means not allowing people to blame others for a mistake (no matter how large) OR blame themselves. Everything is just a lesson to learn from and avoid in the future. If blame creeps in – nobody will feel safe and secure enough to take those risks again.

Hire for culture

A lot of business leaders I respect say you have to always hire for skill and culture can follow – but I believe if a person doesn’t fit your culture it doesn’t matter how great their skills are, they are never going to drive your vision forward.

Before we do any recruiting interviews every short-listed candidate gets what we call a ‘culture call’. Generally done by our happiness manager, the purpose is not to find out their skills for their job but their cultural fit for our brand. If they aren’t on culture – they don’t make it to the interview.

Beware the pitfall here. You can’t only hire one type of person and call that culture fit. Don’t just surround yourself with people that are just like you. That doesn’t make for a great team or a great business. We have introverts and extroverts. Creatives and doers. Different ages, different life stages. An ex-cop and a committed surfer.  

Build a teaching mentality

One of our core organisation values is teach. This means every single person who joins our team needs to be willing to, or more like excited to, teach others their unique skills.

I used to work for a large publishing company, and I found in that culture, knowledge was often a very hoarded thing. If you shared your knowledge with someone else, it made you less valuable and easier to replace.

I believe this is plain wrong. The more people teach each other the stronger we all become. This means from myself as the director to the interns, we all learn from each other and look for opportunities to learn and teach every day.

Perks that suit your tribe

Perks is a word that can send shivers down the spine of a small business owners. We don’t have the budget for perks, right? We can’t afford to provide a barista every Tuesday or an annual trip to the Bahamas.

Perks don’t have to be expensive; they just have to be really relevant to your culture. There is no one size fits all.

For example, one of our ‘perks’ is that every employee receives two paid days per year to volunteer. As you can imagine given our clients are causes, not for profits and social enterprises – our team are people who enjoy adding value and giving back. So, this works for us.

Celebrate milestones

This is something I learnt from the founder of the Remarkable Group Lorraine Murphy. She spoke about the important not just of setting goals but celebrating them. I loved this idea and it is one we have embraced.

Sometimes it can be so simple as getting the team together and just talking about an achievement, how we felt when we set that goal, how hard we worked and how proud we are to see it come to life.

Other times it can be a more tangible outcome, like a celebration, outing or reward. But it’s always important not to focus on what you haven’t yet done but take the time to reflect on how much you have achieved.

Connect to passion & purpose

The number one most important thing you have to do create a great culture is to connect your team to their passion and their purpose.

I believe it’s possible to systemise passion.

Every week we have a team meeting, which we call a ‘wow meeting’. We kick off every meeting with each team member sharing a wow moment. These can be three things:

1)   A moment in our business from the last week that made them think ‘wow’. It can be a client who achieved something amazing, a milestone they ticked off their own list or even just a moment they reconnected to purpose.

2)   It can be a shout out to someone else in the team and how they ‘wowed’ them. It highlights those moments when others demonstrated our values.

3)   It can be something personal. This could be anything from someone’s child hitting a personal milestone to something personal in our lives that really made us feel grateful that week.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned on the journey to create a workplace culture I can be proud of, don’t look to others for the answer. Another organisation may have an amazing culture, but it won’t be the same as yours.

You need to really look at what makes your vision and organisation unique and draw on those features to create your culture. Some things you might try, make not work. That’s okay let go of them and try something else. Be inspired by what others do in your sector and other industries, borrow the ideas, make them your own and create some that are truly unique to you.

I’d love to hear about any culture tips you have for our tribe. Comment and share those now.