Our triple C for a happy office life
⅓ of our entire life is spent at work, which is an average of around 90,000 hours. The climate at work or Corporate Culture, therefore, makes a huge impact on our quality of life.
Since I started The Branx together with my co-founders, I was asking myself which corporate culture we were going to have. What are the core elements of our corporate culture? How do our values contribute to our vision and mission? And what do we have to consider when hiring new candidates? (This question actually came much later after we had a candidate who finally did not fit at all into our corporate culture)
“Corporate culture refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define its nature. Corporate culture is rooted in an organization’s goals, strategies, structure, and approaches to labor, customers, investors, and the greater community.” According to Inc.
Different types of Corporate Cultures
Hierarchy Cultures
Process and procedure are everything in a hierarchy culture. Leaders are there to monitor and facilitate adherence to tried and true ways of doing business. Costs and mistakes are kept low by following the rules — in my previous working experience “Unilever”
Clan Cultures
Clan cultures have a friendly, collaborative culture and can be compared to a large family where people have a lot in common — in my previous working experience “Mondelez”
Adhocracy Culture
In this dynamic and innovative environment employees are willing to take chances. Leaders are typically seen as inspirational innovators willing to challenge assumptions and take risks. Core values reflect change and agility — in my boyfriends previous working experience one of the rising stars in the Tourism Segment
Market Culture
In this environment, the goal is to get down to business, get work done, and achieve results. This is often a competitive environment, even among coworkers. The purpose of being at work in a company with this type of culture is to make as much profit and capture as much market share as possible — in my previous working experience “L’Oréal”
If I had to pick one of the following culture types, I would rather say we established a type of “clan culture” where our team members have common values and beliefs. I would describe each of us as solution-oriented, grounded, hard-working, willing to learn, willing to achieve and resourceful while collaboration and personal well-being are highly important at the same time.
The triple C artifacts
The 3C are the visual artifacts that represent our corporate culture internally and externally.
The other day we had to do an ad-hoc company presentation for university students and without even thinking, we started filming the typical things we thought that would represent us in the best possible but also funny way — yes, we tried to be cool in front of those young university students.
🍬 Candies 🍬 — I would lie if it only were candies. Actually, it’s candies mostly for me (and cigarettes for my co-founders). In stressful situations, our candy consumption is increasing heavily — but it’s a good way to loosen tension, not so good for our blood sugar though… I personally believe that candies represent the hard work and commitment to delivering a good job.
☕ Coffee ☕ — Actually this is a very Spanish thing. It’s a non-written tradition to go for breakfast during work time. We have a common room and the guys love to have their breakfast together and get their day started and organized this way. In my opinion, this is how collaboration is represented. It’s about talking to and empathizing with each other.
👟 Crocs 👟— when we have our creative sessions or when we have to resolve a problem that seems not to be resolvable, we put on our Crocs. Crocs are a kind of slippers that have a weird and totally unaesthetic shape. Besides, every time we wear them, we get electrostatically charged and when we touch something we get a little electric shock. Probably we thought that in this way our work would get an extra boost ;) I think our Crocs is the visual representation of our creativity while being a super uncreative artifact at the same time. And yes, we have them in our corporate colors since we have Brand Experience in our DNA.
Reflecting on our Corporate Culture, I am pretty happy to be part of how our culture is shaped by our personality, our habits, our way of thinking, our way of working, and of course, our triple C artifacts 🍬👟☕
Check out here our daily life:
👉 https://vimeo.com/343076107 👈
