Having a strong and desirable corporate culture helps attract and retain exceptional talent. Every company has its own values, and an inclusive and healthy culture can assist you to attract high-performing and engaged team members.
It’s time to look into your internal environment and assess what particular aspect of your culture keeps your team going and even brings in impressive recruits. To help you get started, some EO Melbourne members share their experiences and best practices when it comes to maintaining a culture that supports the growth of their business.
Nurturing relationships with key stakeholders
Having good relations with people you work with is a major factor for wanting to stay longer in an organisation. The same goes for third-party service providers, which prefer to conduct business with those they have amicable dealings with and those they can trust. This is why Austin Vaughan, Managing Director at Pacific Solar, emphasises strong relationships as part of their corporate culture. “Our core values are towards nurturing relationships with key stakeholders, such as contractors, suppliers, developers, and builders, so that they continue to think of Pacific Solar first when any new or forthcoming opportunities are presented. When something unexpected occurs (and it always does in construction), they have our back to pull us through and vice versa. A good cooperative approach is essential to our success.”
Open communication and encouragement of team members
Open communication helps build rapport with team members. It also enables business owners and HR managers to lessen misunderstanding and address concerns at the onset before things can blow up into serious issues.
Ben Stickland, Founder and CEO of Alliance Software, shared how they do it in his business. “The best corporate culture technique we have is a one-on-one interview with every staff member. We ask the staff member to reflect on challenges and coach them to consider and act on solutions. It's 30 minutes, that's all about them. We always ask the question ‘from a 1 to 10, how happy are you,’ and follow this up with ‘and what would it take to get to a 10’. People become unhappy for many different reasons and the key is to get to people early in their ‘unhappiness’ cycle and coach them to a good outcome rather than pretend there are no issues. Look for issues, don't avoid them.”
And for Dion Castle, CEO of Struber, it’s all about having “High-performance behaviours + high-performance habits”. A culture that fosters behaviours and habits that help increase productivity and create positive energy will encourage team members to always do their best and aim for the utmost results in all they do.
Building mutual respect and a sense of belongingness
Trust and respect are strong foundations of a good relationship and a positive corporate culture. But how do you achieve this? According to Steve Jackson, Director at PurpleMonky and Founder of Moon & Back Co., “People on the team respect each other, have fun with each other inside & outside of work, but most importantly, they support each other daily. No one is in it for themselves, and the ability to produce a shared vision where ‘when one person wins, the entire team wins’ is invaluable.”
Similarly, for Nyree Hibberd, CEO of Koh Living, it’s all about promoting a safe and healthy environment where those in the organisation feel they belong to the team. She explained, “We had a guest speaker in a recent EO forum, Fiona Robertson, who wrote ‘The Rules of Belonging’ and we applied it immediately in our business by asking each of the staff what they felt the rules of belonging and being accepted within Koh were. It was an amazing exercise to get clarity on the culture or rules of belonging, and we now use that not only in the interview process by selecting more carefully but also in the induction process by outlining those rules of belonging to help new staff slide in and feel more comfortable a lot faster.”
Culture is important in the longevity of a business and an organisation. Share with us below what particular culture you uphold within your company that strengthens your team and helps it go forward.