As I’ve been going through the book, “Benefitfocus: Winning With Culture”, I’ve thought about what made their culture so successful compared to other companies. After thoroughly considering this question, I realized that some of the issues companies have in regard to creating and maintaining their cultures are because they don’t follow through. So many times I have witnessed companies state that they had a certain mission, culture, and vision and yet, some of their branches/locations or maybe even the company as a whole did not practice what they preached. So how can companies expect their employees to maintain the culture they specified if seasoned employees are teaching them something entirely different?
The reason why Benefitfocus can have bragging rights about their culture is because they actually practice what they preach. They defined their culture, they put it into play, and then they ensured that they kept up with the culture so it didn’t die throughout the years. Maintaining culture is all about consistency. If you want to be sure that your culture will live on and have more glory days, you need to be sure that every current and new employee who works for you knows what your culture is and what their duty is to play the part in making your company’s the best. Benefitfocus found a way and this allowed them to have endless employee testimonials raving about how the work environment is great, the reasons why it’s amazing, and the reasons why they are proud to work for the company.
Do you honestly believe majority of your workforce would feel that way? If not, then you need to consider some options on how to create and maintain the culture you originally wanted:
- Get feedback from your employees: they’re the ones who are going to keep this culture going. The easiest way to ensure they’ll happily do so is to create a culture that not only has the company’s best interest at heart, but also one that takes in account the employees’ values. It is a lot easier to promote a culture if it involves things that relates to your employees’ personal values.
- Create your backbone: based off of your company’s needs and the feedback you received, you should be able to define a clear list of what the culture should be. This will be the foundation of your culture and also will define your employer brand.
- Create a plan of action: decide on what course of action you will need to take to make this list into a reality. After all, the issue that companies deal with is the fact that they say they’re one thing but never really do anything to prove it. Thoroughly determine what steps the company and employees will need to take to build the culture.
- Set up a maintenance plan: maintaining your culture will take continuous effort. Be sure to appoint people in the organization (even a rotation of people) to gather feedback, encourage, and troubleshoot. To maintain the culture, it must always be in the front of every employee’s mind. It must always be practiced.
- Celebrate: give your employees reasons to want to maintain this culture- don’t just tell them to do it and then forget about it. Culture should always mean a reason to celebrate and promote a good-feeling, overall. Get your employees into the habit of correlating their efforts to maintain the culture into something positive.
The culture of the company is the core of the company. It defines who they are to customers and to employees. It determines if the company will attract quality talent to lead the company to success or not. Benefitfocus has endless pages of positive employee endorsements – maybe if your company follows these steps, it could, too.
Benefitfocus:Winning with Culture
