In this blog article we’re going to run through some important things you need to be aware of when it comes to maintaining a strong company culture when your business is experiencing significant growth.
Congratulations, you’re experiencing growth and you’re hiring a swathe of new people to take up a host of different positions. You’re holding daily interviews and meeting candidates from different backgrounds, cultures and mind-sets. Some may be dragging the baggage and culture of their old workplace, while others are fresh, unaware and not quite sure what to expect.
If you’re not prepared for the significant changes to culture bringing in new team members during a period of growth will bring then expected the waters to muddy and that precious culture you and your core team lived and breathed will begin to breakdown, inviting bad habits, potentially affecting your ability to attract talent in the future and increase employee turnover.
But don’t fear, if you do this right and bring in the right people who know about your culture you’ll stand a better chance at hiring devoted and passionate team members who’ll preach and live your company culture, establishing your business as a great place to work!
Define, understand and preach your culture.
This is something we spoke about in our Talent Attraction article, as more people swell the ranks of your office they’re not going to know what the office culture truly is, this is why it is vital to really define what your company culture truly looks like.
Spend some time interviewing your staff and discussing with your management team what your company culture is, how you want your employees to behave, what are your company values. Don’t just make a bullet point list of vague buzzwords, defining your culture needs to be clear, don’t let it be ambiguous.
Once you understand your culture and have a clear definition of what it looks like preach it! Whenever you have meetings and discussions with your team remember to talk about the finer points of your company culture, so your team new and old properly understand what you’re trying to build and maintain.
Make it visible for all to see! If you’re proud about your company culture you’ll find your employees will be too, think about putting things up around the office, plaques or signs that personify your culture points. Have your culture up on your website, so you’re able to attract that talent.
Make sure you hire the right talented people into your company.
Making a poor hire who doesn’t ‘get’ your company culture can be devastating. There’s nothing worse than a pessimistic person sowing seeds of doubt into their co-workers, so hiring the right person is paramount.
Just like you’ve define your culture, you want to spend some time defining the ‘type’ of person you want in your company. Will they transition well into the team dynamics? and can you see them loving the more quirky points of your office culture?
When you’re hiring make sure they not only fit your required skill set and experience, but their personality is a sure fit.
We and many of our members use the thorough and insightful personality profiles from Thomas International when hiring. By asking choice questions they’re able to create profiles that map out the tendencies and working habits of the person, these tests can be hugely insightful and if benchmarked against your defined cultural fit you’ll be able to bring on people who’ll fit in well with the team and perform well.
Don’t forget to involve your team in the hiring process, if you want to preserve your culture then much of it rests on the continued happiness of your existing employees. Bringing the rest of the team into the interview process (around the 2nd interview) means they’re able to meet and interact with the candidate and are able to give some frank advice to whether they’d fit in with the team.
Go the extra mile to consciously recognise employees work
As the head count rises it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the increasing headcount, becoming alienated from staff old and new. You can cure this by setting yourself clearly defined times daily or weekly, to recognise the achievements and wins of your employees.
Making everyone feel like they’re still brining value and growth to the company will help enforce that culture and avoids them starting to feel like cogs in a big corporate machine!
Don’t let any employees become ‘Hermits’
One of the most exciting parts of experiencing significant growth is that you’re able to open and hire in new branches, things like Marketing, User-Experience, Customer-Experience, Accounts – But the problem with this is the new hire may be the only person in that team, potentially alienating them from other established teams, becoming ‘Hermits’.
You can remedy this issue easily by taking note of this issue and acting upon it from day one. Get these people involved in group activities and team collaborations so they are given the chance to build relationships with other people within the office.
Organise and diarise ‘Culture minded’ activities.
A great way to promote and maintain your companies culture will be team wide events out of the office where everyone can have a great time, interact and build friendships. These kind of gatherings are important to keep employees happy, motivated and invested in the company and its values.
Treat these events just like any other calendar specific part of your business, keep a level of consistency, rather than ad-hoc when you feel like it. Having a monthly or weekly culture minded activity helps bring the team together, this also helps new hires in your growing team by establish meaningful relationships with staff they may never have interactions with in the work day.
Many companies who the culture completely right have set up clubs and groups (Morning yoga, breakfast clubs) these small moments where different employees come together
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