How to Create a Fantastic, Cohesive, Creative and Collaborative Company Culture — Building a Culture of Integrity

Now that you’ve created your mission and made it loud and clear by having your mission and guiding principles be a part of every social media post that you make, every marketing campaign that you have, a part of all of your internal documents and a part of every interaction that you have with your customers, it is time to build out a culture that is consistent with your mission. There are three key factors towards building a culture that will align with your mission — interviewing, hiring and onboarding and when you do all of them in the right way for your new hires, you build a foundation of integrity
When it comes to interviewing, hiring and onboarding, it is crucial that you create a process that allows you to quickly gauge if the people that you are considering to work at your firm share the beliefs and values that your company does. It is also crucial that you create a selection process that integrates all three of these key aspects and is set up to hire for fit as much as it is setup to hire for skill. I know that hiring for fit may sound counterintuitive to many people and skill alone is not enough to create either a great company culture nor a winning team. You must have players on your team that can fit into the roles that are needed to win and players on your team who buy into the company’s values or risk having these values get buried under the carpet by people who I call culture killers — people who are skilled at what they do and will take any measure necessary to produce results. These are not the people who you want on your team if your goal is to build a fantastic, cohesive, creative and collaborative company culture.
In order to get a greater understanding of why interviewing, hiring and onboarding make such a huge difference, I am going to break down these three key drivers to creating a fantastic, cohesive, creative and collaborative company culture.
Step 1 — Interviewing
When interviewing candidates, it is crucial to understand their values if you are going to create the company culture that you want to create. This is where a two step interview process comes into play. Hold two interviews for every position from your Administrative Assistant to the company’s Chief Operating Officer. The first interview focuses solely on the candidates beliefs, values, goals, personal motivators and their mission. The goal of this interview is to see if the candidate either does or does not fit into your culture. If the candidate does, then move them on to the second interview, if not, don’t move them on second interview.
The goal of the second interview is to ascertain the skills that the candidate brings to the table and to see if they really can get the job done. Look, I know that this makes the hiring process longer and I understand that sometimes you have an urgent hiring need and you’ve got to fill a role now. The caveat here is that rushing a candidate through the interview process shows the candidate a couple of things:
1) You need them more than they need you
2) You are desperate
3) You could care less about them as a person — I know this one sounds odd and when you don’t get to know the candidate and are in a massive rush to hire them and have only evaluated their skills, they feel like you only care about their work and it is hard for this person to feel any level of connection with the company or with your employees. People who do not feel a connection with their co-workers or their company tend to leave their job quicker than people who feel a connection to their company or co-workers.
So take your time and put integrity into the interview process
Step 2 — Hiring
Now that you have had two interviews with the candidate and are clear that their values, beliefs, mission, goals and personal motivators all are aligned with the mission and guiding principles of your company and you are clear that they can do the work, it is time to make an offer to the candidate. When making an offer to the candidate you now want to reinforce the mission of your company through your offer.
In your offer you want to tell the candidate the salary range for the position, then offer them a salary based on what you feel they are worth.
Here’s the caveat: one of the worst things that you can do is to offer the candidate a lowball salary or tell them that they have to prove it first before you can pay them what they want.
If you have a great candidate in front of you whose values align with those of your business, then they are not going to try to fleece you or take advantage of you, so don’t try to fleece them or take advantage of them. This leaves a nasty taste in a candidate’s mouth and shows them that you really only care about the results that they produce.
After you and the candidate agree to a salary, it is time to hit them with your benefits.
***Your benefits must line up with your company mission. Repeat, your benefits must line up with your company mission.***
If one of your company values is “Caring about employee well-being”, then offer quality health insurance, discounts at local gyms and rewards that incentivize healthy actions that your employees take.
By having great benefits that align with your company’s mission, the person that you just hired will truly see that you practice what you preach and will gladly sign on the dotted line.
Step 3 — Onboarding
Onboarding is crucial for all companies - Your staff needs to know what is acceptable and unacceptable in the company culture, they need to be clear about your policies and procedures, how they earn PTO, how they request vacation time, who to go to if they have an issue, what their job will be like and more. While onboarding is matters at all companies, it is even more important for companies who are committed to creating a fantastic, cohesive, creative and collaborative company culture.
Your onboarding process is where your new employee gets to form relationships with their co-workers, gets a feel for how things are done and serves as another opportunity to sell your new hire on how great your company culture is. So go all out, take your new hire to lunch, bring their Manager in to lead a segment of the orientation and to answer questions, have your new hire meet all of the people that they will be working with and let them spend 10 to 15 minutes with their co-workers.
When a new hire feels connected to the people that they work with and connected to their company, they feel supported and feel like they can get right into doing the great work that they have to offer. When a new hire has a smooth transition into their new role and feels that people are open to their ideas and are supporting them from day one they can bring their creativity, unique personality and unique skills to your company and the people that work with them. This causes work to move along rapidly, accurately and with great precision because every one in the office feels like they are striving towards the same goals and outcomes.
When onboarding a new candidate it is also important to set clear goals and expectations with the new hire. When someone knows exactly what will be expected of them and has a good understanding of what they will be dealing with on a day to day basis, they get right into the nitty gritty of their job.
Whether you are a brand new company or an established big business, keep your company values alive throughout the entire interviewing, hiring and onboarding process matters. Doing so quickly eliminates candidates who do not fit into your culture, clarifies all of the key things that a candidate needs to know to be successful in their new roles and truly shows the candidate that you are who you say you are. This is called integrity, companies that are committed to creating a fantastic, cohesive, creative and collaborative company culture are also companies that operate with integrity.
