Nurturing your people and culture — 5 key insights from Bulb, Wonderbly and Sanctus
Finding and retaining great people are extremely important activities for early stage companies, and yet they’re often the least understood aspects of growth as founders set out to scale.
Our second Canvas Night, “All About People”, welcomed three leaders to share their experiences of implementing people and culture-related initiatives. This article summarises the most useful insights from the evening.
Insight #1: Start thinking about your people and culture early
“We created our culture doc when we were around 25 people. At the time we were kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner” — Michael, Bulb
Every hire you make increases your team’s social complexity. It’s difficult to overcome this complexity and scale culture at pace with headcount if you haven’t gone through the exercise of describing your shared purpose, values and behaviours as a team. Starting early has helped these companies to stay true to their founding purpose, to nurture social bonds, and to attract top talent as momentum builds. Culture informs everything you do and so it has to be seen as a day one activity.
Example: Simplicity is at the core of Bulb’s identity as a business, and has been from the get-go. The “keep it simple” behaviour outlined in their culture deck reflects their continual efforts to simplify and improve processes for their members, such as their community pages. For example: How do I read my smart meter?
Insight #2: Leader engagement and sponsorship really matters
“I was really lucky, the founders had my back from the beginning. If you’re a Head of People & Talent looking for a new role, look for founders who can appreciate the value that good people operations can add to a business” — Jess , Wonderbly
Company cultures are greatly influenced by the behaviour of leaders. As such, a team’s values are most meaningful when they’re modelled, endorsed and celebrated by the people in positions of authority. This is important when a team first embarks upon their journey, and increasingly so as they grow.
Example: Sanctus helps businesses to create a safe space for their employees to explore and nurture their mental health. Attendance levels and NPS scores on Sanctus coaching sessions are higher when leaders demonstrate the vulnerability they’re trying to encourage in their staff by sharing their own mental health stories with their teams. To walk the walk, co-founders of Sanctus James and George apply this behaviour internally, sharing their ups and downs in monthly team sharing sessions, and in founder therapy sessions facilitated by an external coach.
Insight #3: Authenticity wins
“James’ honest blog post about his journey as an entrepreneur triggered around 600 heartfelt responses from people who’d also experienced stigma around their mental health. He didn’t know what it meant, but he followed it. This kick-started our mission to change the perception of mental health” — George, Sanctus
Your purpose defines the product or services you sell, the people who join your team, your culture and even the customers who buy from you. Most importantly, your purpose gives the whole company a clear understanding of why it exists. Your purpose is something you genuinely care about, something you want to change. People want to be part of change, part of history. Teams gather around ideas that will change things.
Insight #4: Foster your culture with specific initiatives
Going through the exercise of describing your shared purpose, values and behaviours is a great start. But there’s no point in copywriting them into a fancy manifesto and putting them up on the wall for all to see if your people aren’t going to feel the impact of them every day. Values are only useful if you find a way to live them, not just talk about them.
Example: Bulb describes itself as being an energy business in more ways than one; employees are encouraged to be radiators not drains. Recognising that this can be challenging in a high growth startup, Bulb’s current “quarter of learning” is partly focused on mental health, training managers to be more sensitive to stress in their teams, and to have a better understanding of how they can support mental wellbeing.
Example: When Wonderbly asked their employees to explain the best thing about working at the company, most mentioned the amazing team of people they get to work with every day. To celebrate this, they created a Culture Yearbook which they now produce every year.
Insight #5: Play to your strengths
“We decided not to shy away from the image of being a brand for children. If anything, we embraced it. Yes we sell to children, but we’re all big kids, and we all have a great time at work” — Jess, Wonderbly
When you’re a small, busy team needing to hire fast, it can be hard to define your employee value proposition. On top of writing code, managing payroll and disrupting an industry, you’re suddenly required to be a gifted storyteller, painting an inspiring picture of your vision for prospective employees. There’s no dark art to this. As the adage goes: start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can. Play to your strengths and be yourselves. You never know, something brilliant could happen...
Example: When explaining their Employee Value Proposition to candidates, Wonderbly found they needed to convince people they could have a ‘grown-up’, serious job at a company creating products for children. They decided to dedicate a microsite to ‘backstage at Wonderbly’ which carefully explains how they operate and what they’re like to work with. And rather than shy away from their playful image, they tasked some talented employees with the creative challenge of making a careers video which perfectly captures and celebrates their inner child.
What is Canvas Nights?
We were sick of conferences and communities overloaded with bigger agendas. That’s why we started Canvas. Canvas is a casual and curated meet-up where you can actually connect with people. 3 speakers, one living room and a curated guest-list with experts on the topic. Sign up to the waitlist of our next canvas events here: canvasnights.io
