5 Simple Steps to Building Company Culture

If you don’t know where you’re going, then the path you take doesn’t really matter. However, wandering through various paths doesn’t mean success. And when it comes to companies, lacking a clear vision can result in failure.

Without a clear direction, it’s difficult to motivate employees, be productive, create a brand, and develop goals. Bain & Company evaluated various companies in Europe, Asia, and North America and discovered that 80 percent of business leaders agree that the lack of a high-performance culture is what causes a company to fail. This is due to the fact that culture sets the direction for the organization and its employees. It represents the company’s values and guides the company’s practices. And most importantly, it sets a company apart from its competitors.

A company’s culture is the key component to being successful, and here are the steps needed to create a successful culture.

1. Define the Company Values

Whether your company is starting up or has already been established, it’s important to ask yourself: how do we want to portray ourselves? This question is essential to developing the culture of the company because it will help you discover your values. A simple way to go about this is to evaluate yourself. What is important to you? What are you most passionate about? What kind of experience do you want your employees to have? What experience do you want to give your customers?

These are only a few questions you may want to ask yourself, but the point is to dig deep and get to the core values you hold. Identifying these values is important because these qualities are what you’re building your company on. They are the things that are going to guide your actions as a company. Not only that, these aspects are the things that will set you apart from competitors, and attract customers, employees, and business partners.

2. Set Goals

In order to be successful, it’s important to understand what you want to achieve. Some of the questions mentioned above, such as employee and customer experiences, can be used during this step as well. However, during this phase, you want to focus more on the “how.” How do we create this experience? How do we present ourselves in a particular manner? Through these questions, you are then able to develop goals. Most importantly, though, this also gives you the opportunity to brainstorm ways to achieve these goals.

When creating goals, though, keep in mind that you want to make goals that are specific, reasonable, and measurable. Not only does this allow you to define your goals, but it also sets you up for success and allows you to track your results. This comes in handy especially when you’re evaluating your company to see whether or not the things you implement are successful. This also makes it easier to make changes in the future to create more success.

3. Implement Company Culture

Fill your company with people who will complement your company values. Hire people you believe in because these are the people who embody what your company stands for. These are the people who will represent your company to the world, so it’s important to make sure that your employees share the company’s values.

In addition, employees having an emotional connection to their workplace has been correlated to an increase in productivity. This goes back to the idea that when people find worth in their work and believe in what they are doing, they perform better. This then translates to customers, reflected by an increase in Net Promoter Score, and results in an increase in productivity.

4. Evaluate

Once things have been implemented, it’s important to keep eyes and ears open. Getting an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) comes in handy, especially during this phase, because it helps you get feedback. Feedback is crucial because it gives you an insight on whether or not you have an effective culture. Not only does eNPS highlight the strengths of the company, it also illustrates areas that need improvement. So whether this means making changes to policies or bettering communication or customer interactions, this feedback only helps to create a better working environment.

5. Make Adjustments

Once you’ve evaluated yourself, it’s crucial that you make adjustments. Use the company culture you’ve established, your eNPS, and feedback from employees as tools to make changes. These changes don’t have to be dramatic, nor do you have to implement them by yourself. Have a small team of people assist you and focus on core values that will make large impacts.

Contact us for more information about building success through the development of a strong corporate culture.