As you may have seen, one of my clients Premier Education Group, won the Best Company Culture Award at BizX recently.
It was an honour to share the stage with them management team as their company culture was recognised as being worthy of a national award.
I would like to take this opportunity to explain why company culture is so important to invest time building and what the benefits are to business owners and their team.
Verne Harnish has set up a pyramid for business rhythm that has Core Values or Company Culture as the foundation base for all that sits above it. These levels are –
Purpose – Why the business exists and should be reviewed as the business owner changes
Targets – Where the business is heading (business strategy) over the next three to five years
Goals – What the business will focus on over the next year
Actions – How the business will achieve the longer term goals through setting of 90 day plans
Schedule – When the plan will be carried out weekly
Accountability – Who is responsible on a daily basis to carry out the planned tasks.
As you can see from the diagram above, Core values or Company Culture are described as the How business should be done and this should be in place Forever – as long as the business exists.
So, why is this? When any business is set up, the founder will naturally work with their suppliers, customers and team members in a certain way. This will be defined by their values and ethical choices.
As businesses expand, customers and suppliers have less and less contact with the owner as they focus on the lower parts of the pyramid and leave the working “in” the business to those they employ.
Setting the right company culture means that for the External perspective, all who interact with the business will deal with team members who reflect the values and understanding of How to do business of the founder. This gives a level of consistency that remains with the business forever.
The second benefit to the owner of a strong company culture is how the values are experienced by the team. Premier Education Group recruit using their Core Values and ensure all potential recruits are asked to review them and explain which ones resonate most strongly with them. If you recruit on values then change and development needs of the team only need to be dealt with through discussion on a belief and skill level. This aids development of all involved and provides a consistent basis for succession planning and performance level development.
As recruitment is essentially a marketing task followed by a de-selection process, the Company Culture is an important marketing asset and will attract good team members to the organisation. It also reduces employee turnover and increases retention.
Once recruited, Premier Education Group have programmes that cover personal development through monthly 121’s, reward and recognition programmes that all can participate in and benefit form as well as having a Health and Wellbeing Committee aswell as a Safeguarding Committee that ensure staff feel engaged, involved and understand how their role contributes to the business purpose.
With all this in place the higher levels of the Communication pyramid enable the business rhythm to be run, dealing with strategy setting, task planning and fulfilment and dealing with issues and opportunities as they arise knowing that the team are all rowing in the right direction.
If you would like to discuss how you can develop your Company Culture to provide a solid foundation for your future business success please e-mail me or call on 07511 969690 to see how I can help.
