1. Investigate what makes your culture unique
As a first step, companies need to define their culture and figure out what matters to them. That’s why, when we were defining our internal culture at Leapsome, we started by designing a survey to collect our team members’ stories and opinions about who we are as an organization. It allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of what connects us and makes us successful so we could put those values into action. For example, some of our culture survey questions included:
- Why did you choose to work for Leapsome? What excites you about your work?
- What is the biggest value you personally see at Leapsome?
- Think of the best possible version of Leapsome: What values or behaviors within the team or toward other stakeholders would be most important?
- If you think about team members that embody the “Leapsome culture,” in your opinion, what qualities or key attributes do they have? What behaviors do they show?
However, all company cultures are distinct, and you should craft your survey questions based on your own insights and experiences. You may want to ask everyone to participate or keep your survey pool small and limited to a representative sample of team members. As a best practice, use a tool like Leapsome’s Surveys module to ensure all participants stay anonymous.
❓ You won’t know how employees feel about your culture until you ask
Leapsome’s Surveys module makes gathering feedback easier with customizable, anonymous surveys and automated action plan recommendations.
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2. Define & refine your purpose and values
Once you’ve gathered your survey answers, distill the feedback into an official set of values that will inform how you approach everything you do. “Start from a place where you all agree and create a mission or vision statement,” says Jes Osrow, organizational development consultant and co-founder of The Rise Journey. “Then, HR can align with that, management principles can align with that, and compensation philosophies will tie into that.”
In order to synthesize all the input from your team members into one neat set of values, you might:
- Group survey answers based on repeated trends and themes. Use these recurring topics to create a set of tentative values.
- Conduct a leadership and employee workshop that’s dedicated to making those values more concise, tangible, and actionable.
- Use insights from the workshop to narrow down your values and choose the most effective phrasing. For example, a few of our core values at Leapsome are listen and learn, challenge the status quo, seek impact, and be kind and humble.
- Present the final iteration of your values. Explain your reasoning for choosing each value and encourage employees to ask clarifying questions.
🔎 Remember that you’ll likely adjust your values statement over time as industry and employee demands fluctuate and your priorities change. That’s one reason why documenting your values is so important — it makes it easier to revise and modify them later.
3. Make the “culture add” ethos central to your hiring process
Company values allow you to work more effectively and harmoniously — but they aren’t hard and fast rules meant to restrict individual expression and authenticity. That’s the spirit organizations should integrate into their hiring practices, and yet so many allow their values to limit them to recruiting candidates based on “culture fit.” Unfortunately, doing so can lead to more biased hiring decisions and exacerbate diversity gaps.
Instead, companies should take a “culture add” approach to recruitment. That means specifically hiring for talent that can add to the existing culture with different backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and personalities instead of giving preferential treatment to individuals who are just like the existing team — and being aware of that bias. In addition, hiring to increase diversity and intercultural competencies can increase productivity and profitability.
To embody a “culture add” ethos in your recruitment and hiring processes:
- Train hiring teams on what the concept “culture add” means — Educate hiring departments about the role unconscious bias often plays in recruitment so they can avoid letting their preconceptions and prejudices influence hiring decisions.
- Identify the experiences, talents, and skills you want candidates to have for specific roles — Be explicit about the kinds of capabilities you think recruits need to thrive in their potential job so the hiring team knows what competencies to prioritize when reading through applications.
- Utilize behavioral interview questions — Hiring managers should ask candidates to describe specific situations, experiences, or projects that showcased their skills rather than “testing” applicants on their values.
4. Encourage ample feedback, praise & positivity
Our 2023 Workforce Trends Report uncovered that as many as three in four employees crave more constructive feedback and recognition from their managers to help them develop as professionals. In addition, a majority of European respondents reported that they’d received hurtful feedback at their current job. That means plenty of organizations haven’t yet fine-tuned how to make recognition and constructive input meaningful and consistent.
Creating a culture of feedback doesn’t mean that managers and leaders should go out of their way to find reasons to praise or critique their reports. Companies can create opportunities for colleagues to share their appreciation and perspectives by:
- Making the performance review process more transparent and actionable — According to our 2023 Workforce Trends Report, a third of professionals aren’t satisfied with their organization’s current performance evaluation process, where reviews happen one to two times per year. In addition, more than half call for more frequent and better performance assessments. One way managers can do that is by treating performance evaluations as open conversations and pointing to specific instances where employees demonstrated growth or excellence or where they need to develop. Of course, they should also always provide them with clear, actionable strategies to improve.
- Creating a channel specifically for seeking input and celebrating team members — Leapsome’s Instant Feedback module facilitates this by allowing colleagues to shout each other out in public as well as prompting team members to exchange private feedback.
- Giving staff members opportunities to share their opinions voluntarily — Our Q&A board and suggestion box tools give employees a safe space to ask questions, share ideas, and get answers from leadership. This goes a long way toward building and nurturing a company-wide feedback culture.
5. Support development with the right resources
It takes capable, well-trained team members to uphold a positive culture, which is why an organization won’t thrive if it doesn’t support employee growth and development. With SHRM finding that 38% of team members want training that’s more relevant to their roles and that 31% of individuals wish they had more control over their learning opportunities, leaders, HR, and learning and development (L&D) departments have a lot of work ahead of them.
Thankfully, employees don’t need you to source expensive consultants to provide them with training, especially if that’s not within your budget. They just need more focused, strategically designed resources that align with their personal development goals. That’s why team leads should:
- Provide competency frameworks to help employees map their professional journeys — Competency frameworks show team members the skills they need to build to excel in their roles and progress down their desired career path.
- Help create individualized learning plans — Work with employees to create a set of achievable development goals and check in on their progress regularly with dedicated 1:1s.
- Use a learning platform to build relevant training courses — With Leapsome’s Learning module, you can develop and assign tailored learning paths to reports based on their interests, goals, and the skills they need to develop. Our learning paths are also interactive and self-paced so employees can enjoy the experience and take ownership over their progress.
Build a strong company culture with Leapsome
A healthy, vibrant company culture is crucial for sustaining high employee engagement, fostering long-term retention, and elevating overall performance. It can also buffer against burnout and attrition, helping you navigate even the murkiest economic circumstances. It’s a boon in times of change, but it takes leaders and teams who are willing to listen to employees and act on their feedback meaningfully and intentionally.
Additionally, everyone from the C-suite to middle managers to employees needs the right tools and workflows to make gathering input and enacting positive change easier on a larger scale, especially as the company grows.
As a holistic people enablement platform, Leapsome can help address your most pressing cultural needs from multiple angles. Our Surveys and Instant Feedback modules equip you with the necessary tools to source employee insights about culture and facilitate more transparent communication. Our Reviews module allows you to build appreciation and radical candor into your assessment processes so team members can flourish. Finally, use our Competency Frameworks feature and Learning module to give people more control over their own career development.
With Leapsome as your partner in culture, you can lean into what makes your company special and provide a truly enjoyable work environment.
🧚 Leapsome can help revitalize your company culture
Our platform doesn’t just uncover where your organization needs to grow — it gives you the tools you need to take meaningful action.
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