Scaling Culture According to Tech Nation Experts

Organisational culture is hugely important to the success and overall health of your company, your people, and your customers. 

When an organisation has a strong culture, things really start to take off, and so it’s beneficial to spend time considering why your company’s culture is the way it is, and why it’s important it evolves as needed alongside your organisation and people.

Leading change when change is constant

Company culture shouldn’t be stagnant. Just as people change with time, so do their values, which ultimately changes organisational culture.

What seemed appropriate when you first launched may not align with your values, or those of the organisation as you scale, and that’s why evolving and adapting is imperative.

So what we’re saying is, as your company scales, your culture should adapt too. Whether expressly and deliberately cultivated or the culture shift is a result of decisions made over time, a strong company culture gives employees clarity on expected behaviours and outcomes and are able to act accordingly to achieve the wider goals.

Gillian Davis, founder and CEO of Overtime Leader recently held a session about scaling culture for Tech Nation’s Advance: Scaling Leader’s 2.0 course, discussing how early stage founders can develop company culture as they scale - and why this is important as you grow.

She thinks the word culture is used but is often misunderstood. She says: “It’s important to take that step back as a leader to realise ‘Is that culture being reinforced in everything that you do?’

“It’s really important for leaders to understand the role they play in shaping their team and company culture.”

Firstly, Gillian says leaders need to think about the behaviours they need from them and their team, which will in turn drive the business towards its strategy.

She adds: “Once that’s clear, make sure you’re reinforcing those behaviours by recognising and rewarding when they show up in your team. 

“And by doing that you’ve got to make sure that you’re giving feedback when they do it well and also when it’s not on point.”

But it’s not just about critiquing your team; as a leader, self-awareness is a critical part of the journey of cultural growth too.

Gillian advises leaders to seek feedback to ‘make sure you’re role modelling the right behaviours to drive and lead that strategy to shape your organisation’s culture.’

What do leaders need to think about when talking about culture?

Gillian says culture is defined by everything that you do: “It’s both in the intangible things like process and how you speak to one another, to the tangible things like how you set up an office or not.”

Leaders need to take a step back and think, ‘Is the culture of your business reinforced in everything that you do?’ ‘What does your onboarding look like?’ ‘What does your hiring experience say about what it’s like to work with you?’ ‘What does your performance management system signal in terms of how light touch or how heavy handed it is?’

All of these things play up to the culture of an organisation - but it shouldn’t fall down to one dedicated team, or person, as it’s everybody’s responsibility to ensure cultural growth is achieved.

“But most importantly leaders have to role model that culture or else it’s a big waste of time, money and effort,” Gillian adds. 

Dealing with change

Change can be difficult to deal with in a position of leadership as although you are supporting your teams, they may equate change with failure: ‘Are we not doing it right? Have we done something wrong? Are we not succeeding?’

Employees across the business need to understand who is doing what, the priorities you have, why changes are being made, and how it relates to the vision and fits in with the strategy. 

However, Gillian says it’s important for you as a leader to understand what is within your circle of control that you can immediately act upon versus what is in your circle of influence and the changes that would need counsel and conversation as you drive the company forward.

Checklist for reviewing culture

2020 was a year full of changes and challenges for everyone - in both our professional and personal lives. 

2021 has been the year of working and living in a new hybrid reality, which hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing. 

However, evaluating and building employee engagement and culture can be a complex project to tackle. So, we have a few ideas to help you along the way.

1. Revisit, communicate and celebrate your values 

Are company values well-known across the organisation?

Although important, values are often dismissed as corporate jargon without purpose. In fact, according to Gallup, only 23% of employees strongly agree they can apply their organisation’s values to their work every day, and only 27% believe in their company values.

To fix this, communicate corporate values and reinforce them - they’re the foundation of your ideal workplace culture. 

At times of huge change, like scaling, revisiting organisational values is vital. Do they still resonate? This is important as strong values help guide your employees with work and daily decisions. 

As an example, one of Bloom & Wild’s values - if not the company’s most important value - is centred around the value of care.

Bloom & Wild deliberately interjects people in the hiring process to test for care - to see if people will care about their work, customers, team, and the environment.

It’s important to keep values as you grow, especially if it’s at the heart of your ethos; employees will know it takes precedence when juggling priorities. 

Values can be used as benchmarks for employee performance, and help you recognise those who incorporate them into their daily work.

2. Communicate intentionally

Effective communication is key, especially in the hybrid format many companies continue to work within.

According to Forbes, the average attention span of a millennial is 12 seconds, and for Gen Z, it’s eight seconds, meaning that 7-paragraph email probably won’t effectively resonate with those groups. Finding the right channels and formats to engage with different departments and teams is your first hurdle.

Phil Burton, COO of Bloom & Wild notes why it’s important to ensure employees understand how their accountability and ownership has an extrapolating impact across the business. 

With poor communication, remote workers can feel lost and/or forgotten in their environment. Publicising the contributions of an employee means others will feel empowered, more engaged, and connected.

3. Dive into your culture

There’s a saying ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ and in many ways this could be an expression to work by. 

Studies have shown that employees with strong connections to their organisation’s culture demonstrate higher levels of engagement. 

Culture doesn’t only come from the top-down - unlike strategy, values, and vision - meaning, employees and middle managers will significantly impact corporate culture. 

Managers saying good morning every day, or allowing flexible working set the tone for the culture an individual employee will experience. Managers need to know an organisation’s cultural expectations to engage teams throughout. 

Figuring out culture can be a hard nut to crack, but it’s important to be aware of the good, bad, and the ugly in your company’s existing culture to help you hire the right people moving forward.

Interview employees at all levels to find out how they feel and plan out what changes will be best for the company as a whole. You could take it one step further by incorporating culture into policies and practices and recognise employees who live by organisational values. 

4. Recognise your employees regularly

Recognition is vital to foster employee engagement, in fact, a strong recognition culture can also improve individual and overall business performance.

Companies with the highest engagement levels see employee recognition as a way to develop employees to new levels of success, benefiting their own career growth and that of the organisation around them.

There are lots of platforms that implement, simplify, and normalise frequent organisational recognition, enabling you to track who is recognised and recognises people most often, demonstrating who is getting involved in cultural change.