How to Create a Winning Company Culture

This article comes from Entrepreneur.

How to Create a Winning Company Culture

What can a startup — your startup — do to make itself attractive to its employees and job candidates and benefit overall from a winning culture?

Hire for your culture.

Whatever stage your company is at, it will already have some semblance of culture. Of the employees you already have, some will have traits that you want in new employees.

You need to hire people who fit this dynamic, which could mean searching for people with similar backgrounds. Or perhaps you’ll want to search for people for a more creative environment full of free thinkers who are open to new opportunities.

Whatever candidates you yourself are aiming for, make sure you design your recruitment process around those desired core traits. The result will be a more homogenous environment.

Determine your core values.

A company must have core values that dictate how it will interact with the world, and how it will be viewed by its customers and society. It is important to also set employee values. These values will dictate how employees should conduct themselves, and how they should approach their daily work.

By letting employees know what we value, we make clear that moving beyond the reaches of a job’s parameters and thinking creatively are important goals for success. You can see a list of some famous companies’ core values here.

Focus on family.

The company Sweetgreen, a healthy-salad restaurant chain, has invested heavily in its company culture by aiding the families of its employees. Through voluntary paycheck deductions from corporate employees, Sweetgreen created its “Family Fund.”

This fund offers assistance to employees who require temporary housing, crucial travel arrangements or medical assistance. The company also created a policy of allowing new parents to take up to five months of leave. It is worth considering the average age of your employees and whether family-based benefits would make their lives easier.

Watch your competitors.

In a world where employees change jobs more frequently, there’s nothing wrong with eavesdropping on the competition. Finding out what other companies do to retain employees can give you ideas for a more productive and stress-free environment at your company.

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