What’s your company culture like? Do you ask your team what they think of it? There are many factors at play when individuals look at roles and opportunities in the work market but company culture is becoming increasingly important to individuals when it comes to choosing their place of work. From flexible working positions to development plans, there are many variations of company cultures.

What is Company Culture?

According to Forbes, ‘company culture is anything that relates to customs and norms that naturally form within a company’. Culture is often heavily linked to values and is created when management use company values to influence their leadership style. As with any element in life, leading by example should promote a strong and healthy company culture. 

Within Chroma Marketing, we’re very conscious of our team’s wellbeing and personal lives. We want everyone to wake up on a Monday morning and feel comfortable with going to work. I’m not going to say be happy about going to work because we all know that some Monday’s, you just want to stay in bed! But feeling comfortable about going to work is a step in the right direction. This is why our company culture has resulted in us creating several policies to support and empower our team so they feel their position within Chroma is a positive part of their life and not just a job to pay the bills. As TeamStage reported, ‘companies with strong cultures are associated with increased productivity, better employee engagement and higher profitability.’ 

Given the recent change in working environments (pros and cons of COVID), there is an increase in demand when it comes to what employees want out of their positions. With some companies offering remote working, office working and some even hybrid working, there is so much choice! Employers now need to move with the wave and look at what their team is desiring and how they can provide for individuals needs while also balancing the business needs.

It’s been reported that 86% of job seekers would avoid a company with a bad culture reputation. While highly engaged employees can result in a 202% increase in performance leading to a 33% increase in revenue. With Millennials prioritising people and culture above everything else, now is the time for company culture to be at the forefront of change to maximise business profitability and productivity.

Here are some of our policies we’ve put in place to support our friendly and approachable company culture:

Personal Development Days

We aim to ensure our team enjoy their roles and feel supported in the areas they may find challenging. Every month, each team member is entitled to a development day where they can go on a course, spend the day reading up and researching or attend a workshop on a skill of their choice. There are so many free resources available such as Hubspot Courses, Google courses and even learning opportunities on LinkedIn. This not only encourages development as an individual in an area which interests them but also develops them as a member of our team who could progress within the company over time. 

Unlimited Annual Leave

Our annual leave policy promotes health and wellbeing across all our team (including the directors). Following inspiration from Richard Branson’s business policy, staff are able to take as much annual leave as they like throughout the year. As reported by the BBC Branson stated ‘it is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week or a month off’. We encourage our team to bare this in mind to ensure when they are working, they are in their best mindset and proud of the work they are producing. Need a break? Not a problem.

Flexible Working

Linking to the annual leave policy, we offer the team the flexibility within their role to work around their lifestyle and family. While everyone has a set amount of hours to work every week, we allow these hours to be moved to fit with family commitments, lifestyle choices and any other reason to make our team feel like their job fits within the life they choose to lead. Our team is remote working but also has access to co working days, meetings with our strategic partners and networking opportunities to get out of the house and speak with people face to face. By offering a variety of working environments, we suit a range of working styles.

Sustainable Business Model

When sustainability is discussed, people generally consider the environmental factors. While these are important, we consider sustainability from 3 core pillars, economical, social and environmental. Our environmental values include reducing our carbon footprint, considering our clients values and reducing our waste within home offices.

Many of our social aspects have previously been discussed in this blog but in summary, we focus on ensuring our team looks after themselves while encouraging professional development to support our business goals.

From an economic perspective, Chroma supports local partnerships with universities and traineeships to promote local progression and development in the workforce. Recently we have received acknowledgement of our living wage policy which we are very proud of. This policy applies not only to Chroma’s direct employees but also to any freelancers we outsource work to.

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What can you do to change your company culture?

It’s easy to just let company culture grow and let individuals adapt it to their passions and aspirations. This can be both positive and negative. We would suggest breaking the process down to manageable stages to give culture time to grow but not get out of hand.

Implement changes

If you want to implement a new company value which will impact your culture, make it clear what you are adding or changing. Change can be scary for many individuals so make the benefits clear and listen to any concerns your team may have.

Review with your team after 1 month

While maintaining the opportunity for your team to discuss the change at any time, set out an employee perspective survey. This will measure the understanding of the company culture across your team. It gives you the opportunity to review any issues you may find and provide you with an overview of how your change has been accepted. At this point you might want to review your company culture further and implement other changes. Equally, you may find your team has accepted the change with open arms!

Repeat your employee perspective survey every 6 months

It can be easy to accept the job as done and forget to check in with your team. This can cause company culture to grow in a different direction. By measuring and checking in with your team every 6 months you provide the opportunity for issues to be highlighted and resolved in a reasonable time frame. Also remember, lead by example! Show your company values in everything you do and your team should follow.

While company culture is hugely important, the larger your team, the harder it will be to please everyone. When changing company culture, you may be met with resistance from the team depending on their current views on the culture. The key here is communication and patience. Take the time to listen to your team and take any concerns seriously.

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What should you consider about your culture?

• Physical Work Environment  – Do you need your team in an office? How much space do you have/need? Are your team on their feet all day? Do you need any break rooms/chill out spaces?
• The size of the team  – Are you able to all be together at the same time? Are your team spread across the country or all in the same city? 
• Individuals lifestyles – Are your team married? Have children? Large families? Like to travel? Live far away from the office? Rely on your work team for their social interaction? 
• Industry standards – What are the values of your competitors? How do they show their company culture? What are your goals when growing as a leader within the industry? What do you need to do to get there? How are you going to maintain your current standard? How can you improve your standards?
• Who makes decisions about company culture – Do you solely make the decision? Could your team be involved?
• How do you measure individual values and how they relate to company culture – Have you got an employee perspective survey? What about an employee satisfaction questionnaire? How often do you catch up with your employees and listen to their concerns? Do you have an open door policy? How do you implement your employee’s values into the company? Do you ask about individual values during the hiring process?
• Your Stakeholders  – What do they expect from you? What do you need from the team to make it happen?

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It can be a tricky balance between keeping your team happy and creating a comfortable culture while maintaining industry standards. This is where management skills are incredibly important to ensure you clearly explain the standards and why certain aspects of the company culture exists. 

There are a variety of ways to support and empower your workforce and we know we’ve only scratched the surface. In the future we want to develop these even further so our team shout from the rooftops about working with us. Look after your employees, they’ll look after your business. That’s how we see it!