7 Tips for Creating a Great Company Culture

What makes a company ideal for employees is more than brand awareness, pay, or sales. Company culture is a vital part of what attracts better talent and retains hardworking employees. What’s more, when employees feel connected to a company’s culture, they prioritize a company’s overall goals.

In the Forbes video “Company Culture As A Foundation For Success”, Cotopaxi founder and CEO Davis Smith and Blueland co-founder and CEO Sarah Paiji Yoo sit down to discuss the importance of creating and cultivating a company culture that inspires employees.

Paiji Yoo and Smith dive deep into their experiences of creating, maintaining, and improving their company culture as they grow their businesses. Not only do they offer tips on creating a great company culture, but they also offer advice on how they embraced sustainability and addressed biases in hiring. Below, we share a few tips from their discussion. You can also watch the full video here.

1.     Intentionally Cultivate Your Company Culture

Creating a poor company culture is easy. Perhaps it’s because it’s created with unclear intentions or a vague goal in mind. When a company builds a culture on a shaky foundation, employees feel it and it affects their overall production. But when a company creates a culture that’s just right, everything changes.

“Culture determines behaviors, and behaviors determine outcomes,” says Smith.

According to Smith, a company needs to create a culture with intention. A CEO needs to think through exactly what a company stands for and what they represent. It should be specific — something employees can believe in and want to work toward. Then, a company can build rituals and traditions around those values.

Those values are the foundation of great company culture. They set goals for the team to work toward. They also attract talent that’s just as passionate about the company’s purpose.

2.     Measure and Track Your Company Culture

How can a company determine if its company culture is working? It’s one thing to set intentions and hope to meet those goals. It’s another to drive a company in the right direction. One way to keep company culture on the right track is to find a way to measure workplace culture.

Measuring company culture allows you to make adjustments and improvements along the way. From employee surveys to exit interviews to monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs), measuring culture doesn’t have to be difficult. What’s more, by inviting employees to actively participate in measuring culture, you give them the opportunity to help shape the culture itself.

3.     Weave Purpose and Mission Into the Company’s Values

By building purpose and a mission into a company’s core values, company culture becomes clearer. This is especially true when that purpose and mission weave into all aspects of the culture. Creating a brand focused on doing good in the world is special. It becomes a company where people want to work.

Purpose and mission are more than just goalposts for a company to reach. They’re the driving forces behind a company’s actions. By making the mission an essential part of company culture, it becomes a driving force for employee productivity and innovation. 

4.     Empower the Whole Team to Be Culture Carriers

When building Blueland, Paiji Yoo admits that she and her co-founder believed that creating and fostering the company culture had to fall on their shoulders. This took a lot out of them and became a hindrance to the company culture itself. Over time, they chose to involve the Blueland team in building the company culture.

Bringing the team together to set company values and build its culture empowered them. They felt connected to the company and became “culture carriers.” This allowed the team to make the adjustments needed to keep the culture on track. It helped make the culture at Blueland materialize.

5.     Hire a Head of People to Champion the Company Culture

“Another pivotal moment for us was bringing on a head of people and culture,” says Paiji Yoo.

After hiring a head of People and Culture to help champion the company culture and assist their employees, the CEOs of Blueland asked themselves why they had waited so long to fill this role. Taking care of employees is vital to keeping production on track and maintaining a positive and purposeful company culture.

It’s a full-time job to keep a finger on the pulse of a company’s employees. A head of people can spend their time taking care of people and being proactive and intentional in how they do it.

It’s not about micromanaging employees or monitoring their every move. It’s about making sure employees are happy, healthy, and productive, which helps encourage creativity, innovation, and growth all around.

6.     Address Bias in Hiring to Create a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce

“If you care about results, you care about diversity,” says Smith.

Expanding beyond the usual job boards and social networks is a great way to find talent with a diverse set of experiences and backgrounds. Diversity adds new ideas and points of view to the company, building on the core values and mission and allowing the company culture to grow and become more inclusive. A head of people is an important asset for helping your company commit to hiring diverse talent.

A head of people helps stamp out implicit biases during the hiring process. What’s more, they can help a company look for talent in new places. By plugging into the company culture, a head of people will have insight into where to find talent to add to the team. 

7.     Embrace Sustainability Practices Throughout the Company

For small businesses like Cotopaxi and Blueland, sustainability practices aren’t just a part of the company culture — they’re a key foundation of the company as a whole. Both companies measure themselves by their energy and water usage, emissions, and social fairness. They aim to keep a low carbon footprint and expect that of their partners, as well.

Cotopaxi’s mission is to create sustainable outdoor gear that can fuel both adventure and global change. They’re determined to provide products made in the most ethically sustainable way. Blueland is on a mission to make it easy for anyone to be eco-conscious by offering innovative products in reusable packaging. Both small businesses place a focus on sustainability and weave it into their culture.

Embracing sustainability practices for a small business isn’t just about being good stewards of the Earth; it’s about looking at how to take that goal one step further. How can you do these practices differently? This includes reducing overall plastic consumption along a supply chain and learning how to sustainably source a product.

By embracing a culture revolving around sustainability, a company empowers team members to look at the practices across the entire company. This allows a company to see all aspects of their work instead of only focusing on one area while another is untreated.

When it comes to company culture, diversity, and sustainability, it’s OK not to be perfect. It’s OK to admit that a company is making progress. Making progress should be applauded because making progress means moving forward and recognizing that changes need to happen.

“We should all rally to try to do better together,” says Smith.

For more tips from Smith and Paiji Yoo, check out the Small Business Masters of Uncertainty series. Both CEOs also offer collaboration tips to maximize productivity  and explain how to attract and nurture talent  as part of the Small Business Masters of Uncertainty series. Be sure to check out their other videos for more great advice.