Beyond the Bean Bags
What IS Company Culture?
N.B. “Beyond the Bean Bags: What IS Company Culture?” was originally written and published on the official Clinch.io blog.
As a team that values and strives for honesty and authenticity in everything we do, Clinch encourages companies to talk openly and freely about their company’s values and culture when creating profiles on our site.
And there it is again, the human resources and recruitment buzzword of the moment: “culture.” But what does it mean, really?
I put the question to Eamon Leonard, VP Developers³ at Engine Yard, during a recent visit by Clinch to the company’s office in Dublin’s Silicon Docks.
He looks around the bright and airy loft-space office, with its ruby red couches, ping-pong table, and the odd standing desk.
Leonard speaks slowly and pointedly.
“Company culture,” he says, “is an extension of the co-founders’ cultures and beliefs, their personalities, ethics, and processes.”
It’s about behaviour — the behaviour of the staff, a behaviour that is shaped and guided by that of the company’s higher ups.
Leonard emphasises the need for companies to prioritise and protect the less-tangible, the aspects of working life that nowadays, he feels, have a tendency to fall slightly to the wayside when people play word-association games with the phrase “company culture.”
BLURRED LINES
Much has been made of the current technology boom in Dublin. And rightly so. It’s an exciting time for Ireland’s capital city, as the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, HubSpot and TripAdvisor choose to set up hubs here.
Each of these companies is recognised as having a strong company culture, and takes pride in showcasing the lengths they go to in creating a work environment that’s cool and fun, offering everything from generous paid time off to unlimited snacks, plush games rooms, and free lunches.
Appealing perks, for sure.
The danger is when those lines that separate “perks” and “culture” become blurred; when physical features of a workplace and attractive benefits become more than perks, and are viewed instead as “culture items.”
Google is the perfect example of this. Do an image search for the term “Google culture” (doesn’t have to be a Google search, mind you) and brace yourself for a screen full of primary colours, bean bags, and slides-inside-offices.
FOOSBALL: FOOLS ALL?
Clinch works with companies of all sizes in a variety of industries, and through our visits to these workplaces, we’ve noticed a trend. We encourage our clients to use their profile piece on Clinch as a vehicle for sharing valuable insight into the company’s culture and DNA, highlighting what it is that makes this place unique and a great place to work. Time and time again, employees jump immediately to the material perks: the bean bags and the foosball tables.
There’s no arguing that these features make for great pictures and help create an image of a workplace that’s flexible and fun. However, there’s a difference between an office with a foosball table, and an office with a foosball table that people actually feel comfortable using. When it comes to understanding a company’s culture, that difference means everything.
At the end of the day, bean bags and free lunches are merely the accessories of culture. To quote Eamon Leonard, they are “the trappings,” acting as indicators of the kind of culture a company wishes to be associated with, without doing much to shape or directly contribute to that culture.
CULTURE IS PEOPLE
Broken down and examined in its purest form, culture is down to the people. It’s not something that’s exclusively the property of corporate giants such as Google and Facebook with their attractive benefits packages and colourful offices. As long as your company has people working there, it has the potential to foster a culture: one that starts with the behaviours and beliefs of the founders and continues to grow, shift, mature, and develop with the addition and departure of each and every employee.
It’s ensuring that the culture that’s created is a positive one that takes time and effort.
