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The true power of your company will only be unleashed once you create and document a company culture that works for your employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Key Takeaways:

• Commit to consistency
• Compile customer feedback
• Establish and prioritize culture-compliance benchmarks and secure buy-in
• Decide how to recognize teams that meet cultural benchmarks daily
• Reward teams using the 4ps of employee engagement
• Promote a strong documentation culture

Your company is different from any other company that exists, including those operating in the same MSP industry as you. This makes it problematic to use a one-size-fits-all approach for creating a company culture. That said, there are six steps that any company can use to map their way towards a great culture.

The first, and in some ways most important, step to creating a badass company culture is your mindset. Your mindset about what it takes to be a great company will make or break your efforts to create a great culture. 

Creating and maintaining a company culture is an ongoing process, not a one-off. Workplace culture characterizes the very values and beliefs that animate your business. It takes a strong commitment to consistency to maintain the right culture even years after you’ve established it.

As the entrepreneur and motivational speaker Tony Robbins says, “It is not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.”

The culture of your company determines how it operates and interacts with customers, making them the ideal source of feedback about the experience your company culture is creating. This should be an ongoing exercise that kicks in after every transaction between your business and every customer.

Send out questionnaires to customers to gather feedback about their experience at every touchpoint. Your questionnaire should ask questions based on a set of factors you consider crucial for validating the culture you want to create as well as other questions that could clue you in on the current state of things and the performance of the employees involved. You want your survey to be quick and easy to fill out but to also leave room for more detailed answers from those who are willing to give them.

Company culture is not something that can be developed in a vacuum, so get comfortable with this process of collecting honest feedback and commit to doing it over and over again. It can be a little difficult for those who don’t enjoy feedback, especially when responses show a less-than-stellar situation, but sticking to it is essential for the culture-building process.

Culture can only be measured with clear, attainable benchmarks that add to the core pillars that support it. You need to go beyond a few catchphrases that look great on a t-shirt. Make it clear to your employees what they specifically need to do in order to comply with the expectations of the business as far as culture is concerned. This should not be left to their imagination or interpretation at all.

A strong documentation culture is invaluable at this point of the process. Define and document benchmarks against which employees can gauge their level of effectiveness. Explain the benefits of your choice and ensure everyone at every level of the organization understands and buys into these benchmarks.

After setting your benchmarks and securing buy-in, your next step is setting up visible ways to recognize and encourage teams that commit to meeting the benchmarks every day. You can easily do this digitally by creating badges that are unlocked whenever certain teams or individuals achieve certain milestones.

Gamifying your process in this way incentivizes your employees by giving them something to strive for when they meet the expectations you’ve laid out, and thus your culture will be maintained.

Remember the 4Ps of recognition and rewards and use them as a guide to motivate teams. Your rewards should be prompt, personal, public, and proportionate to the success being rewarded.

Don’t end at the level of recognizing teams that adhere to the culture on a consistent basis. Go one step further to reward them for the good work. Every business is different, so feel free to go ahead and define what this is going to look like for your business.

Companies that execute this phase of the culture-building process well enjoy a high level of employee engagement and better work culture overall.

Your company culture is never complete until it is made definite with documentation. A strong documentation initiative helps your company in many ways, not least among which is onboarding when new employees come on board.

The most productive companies rely on a strong documentation culture to help focus their efforts forward, open up new opportunities, and find new and better ways to solve problems. When your company gets documentation right, performance, productivity, and retention all improve as a result.

These six steps are all you need to take your company culture from where it is now to where it becomes the envy of every other business owner who walks in through the company’s front door.

Contact Crewhu

Crewhu has created the only employee recognition and customer satisfaction software that is specifically meant for MSP businesses. If you’re trying to create a winning company culture that will leave your customers and employees happy, book a demo with Crewhu today to learn more.