5 Ways to Build & Grow a Strong Company Culture

1. Identify your Values & Demonstrate them

To foster a great company culture, you have to identify and write down the principles that make up the culture. It can be a sentence, a couple of sentences or a brief paragraph. The written manifestation of the culture you want to foster is critical to helping people understand the culture.

But be careful not to keep on repeating the language as if it is a script. You may notice that you hear managers repeat the same language again and again. Culture is not a script or a tag line. Don’t just say what your culture is. Culture must be practiced. Saying what your culture is does not remove your responsibility to foster it.

Read the written language that identifies your company’s culture, and then reflect on it. What do the values mean to you? How do you demonstrate the values? How you demonstrate one value may be different than how it manifests in others. Allow yourself to interpret the company culture in your own way to lead with authenticity.

2. Ask Employees what the company culture means to them

Show that you are interested in how other people view the company culture. What aspects resonate with them? What aspects are they unsure about? Inquire with your colleagues about what the company culture means to them, and allow your peers and direct reports to lead authentically.

Every person embodies company culture differently. As long as it aligns with the basic principles, allow people to embrace how they see the company culture. Allow your culture, and along with it your company and colleagues, to thrive.

3. Hire Cultural Fits

By using a Cultural Fit Benchmark that accurately identifies the behaviors and values held dear by an organization, you can hire people that will automatically fit with your company culture. Hiring to these attributes helps ensure the right fit. Once the candidate takes the survey, we will be able to see if they possess these key attributes. 

4. Train from the Ground Up

identifying your best and brightest and basing your training on them--> Retaining

Retaining good people is equally as crucial as hiring the right ones. You soon realize, the teams you build have potential and can help your company grow in the long run. They develop your company culture and are valuable. The flip side is that it's tough to retain these people.

Do what it takes to retain them. Please provide them with the best employee retention program you can. More than that, make them realize it's their company too, and its sustainability and growth have a lot to do with them.

5. Elevate & Celebrate

Your employees are the building block of your organization. Your company culture is shaped according to their traits and internal behavior. So it would help if you took care of your employees. Make sure your employees do not feel left out. Listen to them. Give them surprises on their birthdays or work anniversaries. Try to know them personally, be honest and transparent with them.

Support your employees and always help them in need. Actively listen to them, communicate more to understand their state of mind, and try to know about anything bothering them or diminishing their well-being.

When you care for your employees and help them grow, that’s when you build a team that can thrive and accomplish anything.