As cliché as it may sound, creating a tight-knit and open atmosphere at your company does wonders for employee morale, business productivity and employee recruiting and retention. The values instilled by leadership impact your internal teams and also the community, from clients to vendors to partners and more.
Creating an effective company culture doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a combination of time, patience, repetition and consistency to see the culture begin to take root.
Define and Cultivate Culture
When you walk into our office, the first thing you will notice is Kerauno’s mission statement written on our wall:
“We exist to help people by creating a culture that fosters personal, professional and spiritual growth; leading to life changing relationships.”
It’s pretty hard to miss, and it’s that way for a reason. Cultivating value and culture should be discussed as often as business finances or product evolution. Once defined, as the leader of an organization you should try to weigh all decisions and conversations against these values. Remember, employees look to leadership for clarity. If they see you living in congruence with the values the company represents, then they will pick up on your example and more easily adapt to the culture.
Company culture is the by-product of consistent behavior.
Hire for Values
Finding the best employee for a job is a big time commitment. Finding the one who not only performs to expectations as well as fits into the culture proves to be an even bigger challenge. We find it important to ask questions directed toward Kerauno’s values in order to assess the likelihood that a candidate will be able to adapt to the core beliefs, attitude and behaviors that make up our organization.
During the interview process, take the time to really get to know your candidates. Understand their motivations, their values, their hobbies, in addition to their qualifications, before extending a job offer.
Communication and Collaboration
As a company that is focused on the development and sales of a revolutionary communication workflow platform, it’s hard not to incorporate these two pieces into our culture. We believe a culture of communication and collaboration is built by committing to being open and transparent with employees, and expecting them to do the same with each other.
Never be afraid to address conflict head-on. We address the good, the bad and the ugly. The key is transparency. Transparency builds trust. Trust builds great teamwork. And teamwork builds a successful business.
Autonomy
Autonomy is simply defined as “the power to shape your work environment in ways that allow you to perform at your best.” It’s important to set the company’s goals and direction, and communicate it upfront, then allow employees the independence to tactically carry out the mission, as they desire, so long as they get to the end result. This autonomy helps to expand employees’ professional growth and shape them into quick-thinking, problem-solving leaders.
This formula may not be perfect for every organization but you can see how it has helped shape our work environment.
About Kerauno:
Kerauno is a global Communications Workflow as a Service (CWaaS) platform that powerfully connects people, process, software and systems. Through the infusion of key modes of communication including voice, SMS text, chat, email, and social media, Kerauno amplifies existing business software to provide strategic insights and actionable analytics across all forms of communication which affect every industry and vertical. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Kerauno has created a global customer base that relies on its mobile-centric communications workflow platform to optimize business processes, enhance customer, and employee engagements, and drive revenue to the bottom line..