Culture Club: How Companies Bring Cool to the Workplace

Communication is also key!

Great article Josh! The one additional thing I would add is that communication is another piece that fosters healthy corporate culture. At a former workplace, all of my peers and I had healthy relationships that included a lot of trust and organizing parties. However, no one had an especially good relationship with our supervisors and upper management because they often waited to address company changes, such as a change in relationship with a customer, for weeks or sometimes months, well after rumors had begun circulating. On the flip side, there was also sometimes an expectation that people who were not invited to a meeting be aware of what happened in that meeting (of course, there were no agendas or meeting notes one could obtain to get caught up). Probably the worst example of their communication skills is that someone's layoff was announced to the office while he was on sick leave, and management forgot to tell him until a week later when he returned, which naturally put everyone in an awkward position. The stress and suspicion bred by their lack of communication with us is actually what brought all of us lower-level employees together, but I am fully confident that we could have kept this healthy level of socializing and trust AND had positive communications with upper management at the same time. It all really comes down to is showing respect. By taking the approach they did, and doing things like never attending the socials we planned (which they were always invited to), the managers and supervisors were saying that they were too busy for us and/or felt we were below them.

At my best job, we kept communication flowing with frequent meetings and posted updates, but we also had a lot of flexibility in our work as you described. There was a lot of trust that everyone would get their work done, but we tried to provide everyone with information and tools so they could do the best job possible. And, as you said, everyone worked hard and put in far more time than they would have if they were unhappy there.

a nice way to look at it

The head of my department two jobs ago used to say, "Culture is like physical fitness: every day you make little choices that make the culture where you work more or less like you want it." I thought that was brilliant.

(I left that job for family reasons and have been searching for such a good place to work in vain.

thanks

wow, good article and very relevant. Thank you for you insight.