A smile on a Monday morning or why culture matters at work
What’s the culture in the workplace?
Values are abstract, but actions and behaviors aren’t.
Values are the moral and ethical principles that guide people through their life choices, and that includes your workplace — do you like to work at a place with a sense of community, and having breakfast altogether once a week? Or do you prefer to work somewhere else where it doesn’t really matter if you ever met in person and barely know each other, as long as efficiency on delivery is praised? If you can answer these questions, you’re already, even if unconsciously, defining some of your core values.
To begin with, I’d like to share the same definition you can find on Spotify culture’s deck because it’s simple but realistic: “culture is the manifestation of the shared values of the organization as represented by the actions of its members.”
Why is it important? you ask: culture will play a big role on defining marketing strategies, employer branding decisions and HR modus operandi, and these three are deeply connected to the vision and consequent actions a company holds as their common ground when growing and recruiting.
You can’t build a great product simply by having a nice culture, but it definitely enables it because you’ll have collective behavioral standards to look for.
What can you do if you’re just starting and have no clue about what defines your company’s values? Vision is only real when it’s shared!
How to make your company’s core values public if you’re just starting and a) you can’t really translate them into words and b) there’s no budget for an expensive marketing agency?
Maybe this article will give you some hints:
- Ask!
Ask your team a bunch of questions: yes, interview them and record the answers — they’ll be analyzed afterward. It will take some time, but if you take it seriously, it’s worth it, I guarantee.
Here are some examples of questions you might find useful to ask, about:
Their assumptions and expectations for the company:
What are the values and beliefs that make the company unique?
What’s the vision they foresee for the company?
What kind of impact would they like to see it having on their lives?
What impact would they like the company to have within the community?
The personal opinions and life stories that shaped their core values towards work…
What was the best previous experience you’ve had on a recruitment process and why?
How would the perfect candidate for this company look like? And the worst?
What makes the perfect workplace and why?
What’s the role your job/profession plays in your life’s bigger picture and why?
And finally, what would their personal choices on processes and perks be…
Name the only 3 essential Perks you’d have forever if you had to choose?
What are the essential Benefits a company must offer, and why?
How would the perfect manager provide you with feedback on a rough occasion?
What was your best mistake and why?
These questions are only examples, but it’s important not only adjusting them to your project but also acknowledging that the participants should know they’re talking on a safe environment where no answer is wrong or right. My personal opinion? It shouldn’t be the CEO interviewing, but rather someone from Marketing or HR, and the CEO should also be interviewed since they play a crucial role on this topic.
Also, three simple but essential tips: Ask exactly the same to everyone, interview individually and don’t forget that open questions are the best to gather honest answers when it comes to talking about values, personal perspectives, and behavioral descriptions.
2. Analyse! Understand the content hidden under a collective speech.
Now, the next step is analyzing the content. I personally enjoy gathering the full content of all answers to each question, and then analyze it like if it was a single individual answering — it makes spotting the patterns but also the irregularities much easier.
(Spoiler: this is the part were some qualitative studies and speech analysis skills gained on a Psychology degree might help!):
Beware for the importance of incongruences: people say they value teamwork and quality time spent with the colleagues but then consistently would choose higher individual bonuses as a reward and a permanent remote work option? They say soft skills matter but then describe the ideal employee as a heartless, antisocial nerd? Of course, these are caricatures — but nonetheless, it’s super interesting to understand how people’s abstract expectations on what their values should sometimes differ so drastically from the concrete examples they share, and they don’t even realize it.
3. Sharing is caring.
Display the analyzed content in a nice, relaxed setting, preferably around pizza and beer. Reward people for making the time and effort to be interviewed and, overall, for caring about what the culture should be! Share some contentful quotes, make people feel their opinions and experiences were heard and actually useful for the present outcome.
4. Listen to feedback.
Gathering feedback is really important now:
Do people review themselves, and the group attitudes, on the main observations gathered after this analysis? Do they have something they would like to add?
Do they disagree and talk about it? If they do, Congrats!!, they’re actually starting to work on this topic pretty much autonomously!
5. Turn that feedback into actions:
After the feedback, you’re supposed to set up a concrete plan related to those findings, preferably with the HR and Marketing team, or simply everyone if you’re still a team of ten but everyone is as thrilled as you are about making it the best workplace ever.
From the analyzed answers, you probably know a bit more about your team members. For example, you should know by now:
What Benefits and Perks do they (really) value? Are they feasible within your company’s goals and strategy?
To what kind of feedback do they listen to?
Who or what should be rewarded and how?
What kind of interactions do the employees value in a manager? And the managers: do they share these assumptions? If not: what’s the missing link?
What are the personal values your team members share, that make them individually and collectively a good fit for the team? Do different teams within the company share different cultural settings?
What traits to look for on future candidates?
What are the conditions that make a workplace healthy and happy, in the opinion of your employees?
The magic here is that all of these questions serve essentially not only a broader understanding of the team members, individually, but also a rough measure of the common sense and purpose on what you, as a young, fresh startup, just started to do.
If you take this exercise seriously, you’ll probably be able to even draw some lines on really important topics, especially for beginners, such as the kind of benefits and perks you’d like to implement; how will your recruitment processes be structured; and even on how you should present your values and vision to the world!
You want your company’s culture to be attractive, challenging, and yet, to have the most ethical values to be shared within colleagues at a workplace. But above of all… You want it to be played. Otherwise, it simply doesn’t exist. That’s why it’s essential to make it a group decision process.
It takes time… but it’s worth it!
This is not a simple concept, it will take time to grow and develop clear guidelines on how to manage it, and it’s all about processes and philosophy — both influencing one another, organically and bi-directionally, and if it happens naturally, it’s actually impossible to know which one was born first.
The truth is: you can’t actually create a culture: it’s already there, gathered as the shared values your people seize as their own every day. But you can cultivate it, enhance it and promote it, implementing wise policies, team building activities and praising the day to day interactions you’d like to preserve. Most of all, it grows if you actually act accordingly to what you preach.
In the end, the culture you adopt is the real value you have to offer: and that, as opposed to most things in the business concrete jungle, is truly unique.
Why? Because no money in the world can buy a smile on a groggy Monday morning.
Guest post by Francisca Pereira
