How to Be Intentional About Building a Great Workplace Culture
Great cultures don’t happen by accident.
As a leader, you need to be consistently, relentlessly intentional about your culture.
So, what does that look like?
1. You need to promote your culture to the world. If you’re going to attract fabulous employees who are a fit for your organization, then you can’t remain the world’s best kept secret – you need to shout your awesomeness from the rooftops! It’s astounding how most company websites don’t say anything substantial about their culture. Sure, they’ll list their benefits and maybe toss in a casual nod towards their culture (“We like to have fun!”), but rarely do they define and celebrate their culture to the level they need to. Champion your culture on your website and on your social media channels, and as a leader, take personal responsibility for being a cheerleader for your culture whenever the opportunity arises.
2. You need to hire with your culture in mind. You need to not just hire employees who are a “culture fit,” but employees who will help you shift your culture in the direction you want to move it. Hiring only for culture fit, while important, runs the risk of creating an approach where you only hire clones of yourself. And I get it, you are pretty awesome! Who wouldn’t want more of you? However, hiring clones is a surefire recipe for complacency and stagnation. As the old saying goes, “If two employees think alike, one of them is redundant.”
Mike Easton, the CEO and President of Argus, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, captures the essence beautifully with his philosophy when it comes to hiring and building a great team: “Surround yourself with the same hearts, but different minds.” Translation: You want people around you who share similar values, but you need a diverse team of people who think differently and who bring fresh perspectives to your business.
Fortunately, I’ve written an entire book on this topic (it’s a quick read, with a very catchy title I must say) called, “Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire: How to Recruit, Onboard, and Train New Employees to Live Your Culture Out Loud” that has plenty of ideas on how to promote, recruit, and hire with your culture in mind.
3. Onboard and Train for Your Culture. You need to invest in training not just new employees, but all your employees on what your cultural norms are. And no, I’m not talking about one hour every year, or a PowerPoint slide tossed into your on-boarding slide deck. You need to truly invest, in a substantive way, in training for the things that matter to your company to help bring your cultural values to life.
4. Communicate Your Cultural Norms Relentlessly. I’ll have more on this later when we do a deeper dive into bringing your values to life, but for now, I want to remind you that as a culture leader you should never miss out on an opportunity to talk about your culture and remind employees why your values matter. You need to evangelize your culture and become the Chief Repeating Officer of your values and cultural norms. Create regular culture moments in your meetings, seamlessly blend cultural references into your presentations, and talk about your culture in one-on-one conversations with your employees.
5. Hold your colleagues, employees, and yourself accountable when it comes to your cultural norms. Your culture is only as good as the worst behavior you tolerate, so you need to actively use your cultural norms and expectations as line in the sands against which you measure success and hold people accountable, which leads rather nicely to the last point (I so love it when a plan comes together).
6. Make every decision with your culture in mind. This is a biggie, perhaps the biggest. You need to look at every decision through the lens of your culture and consistently ask: “Does this option reflect our culture and will this help us move our culture in the right direction?”
Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame Speaker who speaks about inspiring workplace cultures, culture leadership and workplaces and businesses that leverage their humor resources to drive outrageous results. He is the author of 9 books, including, “The Jerk-Free Workplace” and “The Humor Advantage.” The above is an excerpt from his latest book, “Small Moments, big Outcomes: The Power of Small Moments to Make or Break Leadership and Culture.”
