Company Culture Is Important, But Can You Really Create It?

Although developing a culture that brings in people who have passion and are eager to learn may not immediately boost your bottom line, it may be more important managing that than wondering where you’ll find your next job.

Giving is another core principle Phillips finds crucial to the Whitlock culture.

“We have a very strong giving culture inside Whitlock,” he says. “It’s not just giving as far as charity is concerned, but we do work with JDRF, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.”

Cheryl Cox, director of marketing and communications at Whitlock, says the company has “integrated [JDRF] into everything that we do. We picked JDRF because John Whitlock’s daughter has diabetes, but also because it helps children. We wanted to do something that helps kids, so we thought, ‘we’ll start with this one and work our way from there.’ Originally, it was just doing walks in a few cities, then we did a few galas, and now we have 15 offices doing walks and competing to raise the most money [for the cause]. We have [JDRF] [at its Convergence event in the summer] and at all our big trade shows and we encourage people to donate or at least learn a little bit, to help spread awareness.

“So it is built into the culture, along with other internal programs such as Whitlock Cares, where we all contribute to a fund in case something tragic and unforeseeable happens to one of our employees,” says Cox.

Although Whitlock Cares is a voluntary payroll deduction, most employees do it, says Phillips. That fund is “intended to actually create a fund that is there to basically ensure that none of our people have to endure hardship if something happens to themselves or their families,” says Phillips.

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“I think one of the things that goes into the giving culture is that we try to be very supportive when something happens, we give people time off work that other employers might not give them, we pay them while they’re away from work if they have a child with an illness or what have you,” he says. “I think that’s a built-in part of what we’re about. There are some hard commercial realities to that as well, you know, and we’re paid back through loyalty and retention.”

Phillips highlights passion as another critical core principle at Whitlock.

“We don’t want Whitlock to be a place where someone just comes to get a job, you know … to turn up here and get a paycheck,” he says. “We want people who are inspired to do great things and we want to give them chances to do that. That’s why part of our recruitment process is not necessarily hiring people who have the most amount of experience or the most amount of skill. It would be great if we could every time, but if they have 20 years of experience but no passion, if they don’t want to aspire to learn, to change, to adapt, that’s probably not a good fit for us. We would rather take somebody who’s moldable and changeable, who has that passion and desire. It’s part of our job to maintain that.”

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Inc. magazine recently looked at simple ways for companies struggling with lousy culture at their companies to improve them in 10 minutes a day.

Those ideas include saying thank you to those who deserve thanks, showing humility by apologizing for something you did wrong, buying treats for the office, taking the group out of the office, having real conversations with your employees and brainstorming ideas to improve the culture.

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Many of those attributes have helped other integrators we talked to maintain or improve their cultures. Sometimes, those changes are gradual, but often they are swift and sudden and precipitated by a realization things are headed in or already in a bad place.

The perception of a company from those who don’t work there — and talk about the reality from those who do — can often play a role in developing or changing company culture, says Dave Berlin, president of Video Corporation of America (VCA) for the past 15 years.

“Culture is very important in retaining talent,” says Berlin, whose father started the business in 1972. He joined his father’s company more than 20 years ago. “We used to have the reputation of being an operations-focused, engineering-focused company. What we realized is focusing on those things doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time doing it.”

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