Top Shelf Take: Your Company Culture Is Showing

[00:00:02] Welcome to Top Shelf Take from SpeakEasy HR, presented by Payroll Partners. This is a quick take to cover one topic, share one perspective and give you one takeaway. And now your host, David Noe. Hey there and cheers to you. Welcome to another Top Shelf Take from SpeakEasy HR, presented by Payroll Partners.

[00:00:25] I'm David Noe, an HR leader with 20 years of experience, small business owner, recruiter, content creator and host of SpeakEasy HR. If you're new here, this is a quick take where we take one topic, one perspective and give you one takeaway. So let's get into it. Your company culture is showing. According to Gallup, 20% of US employees strongly agree that they feel connected to their organization's culture.

[00:00:53] Think about that. Only one in five employees strongly feel connected to their workplace culture. So that got me really thinking, what exactly is company culture? And maybe even more importantly, who is actually impacting it? So let me ask you, how would you define workplace culture? Seriously, take a second, pause this, write it down and see what you come up with when you think about workplace culture. Maybe it's your company values, how people interact with each other.

[00:01:22] Maybe it's the environment, the perks, the team building activities, or simply the feeling when you wake up and walk into work. There's a lot of ways to define company culture, but here's one I really like. Culture is the experience that people have every day at work. And if that's true, let's talk about who creates that experience because here's the thing. Everybody does. Leadership. Let's start at the top.

[00:01:48] They have the biggest responsibility when it comes to culture because people watch what leaders do. Leaders set expectations. They establish what gets rewarded. They decide what gets addressed and what gets ignored. If leadership says, we value accountability, but leaders don't hold themselves accountable, employees really notice. If leadership says, we want people to speak up, but leaders shut down difficult conversations, employees notice. Culture starts at the top.

[00:02:18] And if leadership wants the shift in the culture, leadership has to lead the shift. HR can write the tools, create the handbooks, the training, the communication, the framework, but HR can't fix the culture that leadership isn't willing to change. Culture doesn't change because HR sends out an email about it. It changes when leadership starts behaving differently and keeps behaving differently. So let's get to the managers.

[00:02:46] Managers and supervisors, the culture becomes real because most employees don't interact with CEOs every day. They're interacting with their manager. So how does your manager give feedback? Handle mistakes? How do they listen? Do they recognize good work? Do they create an environment where people feel comfortable asking questions and making mistakes? Your managers are culture carriers. One bad manager can create a completely different employee experience than the organization intended.

[00:03:16] Recruiting and hiring managers. They are often the first human interaction a candidate has with that organization. So how you communicate, treat candidates, tell them about the company, what you promised them. That all shapes their perception of your culture before they even walk in the door. So recruiters aren't just filling jobs. They're helping shape the culture. And hiring managers play a huge role too because every decision is a culture decision. When you bring someone new into the organization, you're not just filling a position.

[00:03:45] You're adding another personality, perspective, set of behaviors, another influence on the people around them. That's why I don't think you should simply hire people for fit. You hire people who will strengthen the culture. Healthy cultures can have different personalities, experiences, perspectives. So the question is, will this person contribute to the kind of workplace we're trying to build? Every hiring manager should ask themselves that question. And then we get to the employees.

[00:04:15] Maybe you're thinking I'm not a manager. I don't really influence culture, but I would strongly disagree because you absolutely do. Think about the employees when they welcome the new people into the company. The person who jumps in to help a coworker. The person who brings positive energy into the room. Or on the other side, the person who constantly complains, gossips, excludes people, or makes every problem even bigger than it needs to be. That person is impacting the culture too.

[00:04:43] And I'll get to the 25-foot rule in another top shelf take, but that's for a different week. You don't need a leadership title to influence the culture. Receptionists impact the culture. The administrative assistant impacts the culture. The people in the warehouse impacts the culture. The newest employee impacts the culture. The person with no direct reports, no decision-making authority impacts the culture. So everyone has a hand in the culture.

[00:05:11] Culture is how people feel about their job when they're not even at work. It's how they talk about the company around the dinner table with their family. It's whether you're proud to tell someone where they work. It's whether you wake up Monday morning thinking, I'm ready to go or here we go again. That's culture. Your takeaway, so if you're a leader or HR professional, don't just ask, what's our culture? Ask, what does it look like to work here? And then ask yourself, what am I doing to influence that experience?

[00:05:41] Because you have way more influence than you actually realize. You build it every single day in the decisions, the behaviors, the leadership, who you hire. Promote from the CEO to the newest employee, from the manager to the person without a single direct report. Everyone has a hand in the culture. So look at your people. Look at how they treat each other. And maybe most importantly, pay attention to how they feel coming to work on a Monday morning.

[00:06:09] Because at the end of the day, your company culture is showing. That's this week's top shelf take. Cheers to you. It's a great day to have a great day. I'll see you on the next time.