Workplace culture is one of those statements that is talked about so often, but what does it actually mean in reality? What does your culture consist of? Who embodies your culture? How do you hire those that are a ‘right fit’ for your employee culture?
For me, culture is the action that happens within your company that is based on a set of value principles. This is not everyone’s view and we could debate this in many ways, but let me outline why this is my thought base and I would love to hear your thoughts:
When someone asked me to describe the workplace culture of View HR, the first word out of my mouth was ‘Trust’. Trust is one of those words that is easy to say but it really is the foundation of the way we work. Let me explain:
The ViewHR definition of trust operates on many levels and can be described using many words that you would find in a company value proposition. Honest, integrity, credibility, vulnerability, transparency, reliability, humility, authenticity, and ethical. These words (and probably many more) make up the proposition of our team which culminates in a deep routed and complete trust between us.
I know that I can rely on our team for everything that I could need. This gives us complete power and freedom to act and is the foundation of our success. We believe that this confidence in our team resonates as you meet us and we know that our clients feel this level of trust in us as well.
Our belief is that to be successful you must have trust in your teams and your colleagues. This trust should be ongoing and you should hire based on the extent to which you can trust people to be open and honest with you. You can hire for skills of course, but hiring for trust and building skills seems a much better business decision.
So, once you have trust how do you keep it? Our main piece of advice is to be purposeful. Create an environment where consistent engagement with your teams, open communication, feedback and praise are commonplace activities that occur naturally and regularly. In the evolving workplace, this may become more challenging, so having the framework for these actions will support them.
Our partner LutherOne have a great platform that offers an engagement solution that is different from all others on the market. It has three main streams to manage engagement and workplace culture. Feedback+, a real-time interactive-based employee feedback management solution. MySpectrum is a talent management, sourcing, employee engagement solution. Friday6 is a real-time employee insights management solution with features the early warning signs if your workplace culture is heading off track.
Being purposeful, having an infrastructure to make culture management easy, enabling people to support and work together easily (and provide feedback to each other), and hiring for trust is a great formula for success!
Contact Heidi to find out more.
