This next idea was easy. We had been working to create a bunch of ways that we could frequently and consistently communicate our company culture.
“It was right in front of us and we didn’t see it,” said Miguel. “Our company newsletter was full of informative articles about our 401(k) plan and how to make a claim with our health insurance carrier, but there was nothing about what our company is all about.”
Sadie spoke up next. “We put out our newsletter each month, that’s 12 issues a year. How hard could it be to come up with 12 stories that promote our company culture?”
Sam raised his hand. “Wait a minute, guys. You all think it’s important to spend time making up a bunch of stories to put in the company newsletter. I gotta tell you. I have work to do. I don’t have time to fiddle around with stuff like this.”
The group stopped. We had been in such a positive, back slapping, high fiving mode that we hadn’t noticed Sam in the back of the room. I could tell by the body language from the rest of the team that they would just as soon pooh-pooh Sam out of the room.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You all are on board with this, but Sam has some serious heartbreak with the direction. And if Sam has heartbreak with it, some of the rest of the company is going to feel the same way. You can’t ignore it. How are you going to respond?”
How would you respond? I would like to hear your comments. Why is culture so important? -TF
The problem with company newsletters is, they come from headquarters, no wait, they wreak of headquarters/HR etc. Take any given company on any given day, and there is an issue “in the air” on the floor where it all happens.
One solution might be to highlight company culture in action by using one germane event or decision, in respect to a current employee level issue. In other words, put real action in the newsletter “see, we stuck to our culture”.
Eric,
Thank you for your comment. For this exercise to be effective, it has to be real. That is why I suggest that you get managers involved. Managers know the real stories.
Tough one. I find it interesting to see that more frequent communications of the “culture” is required. Culture is a difficult entity to commuincate and is very often defined by the type of management/leadership in place.
I tend to agree with Eric’s comment. Culture should be practised and not need communications and/but if you are to use the Newsletter; it should not be every release but every so often releases and it would relatively well if done in an editor interviewing management for value return in the Culture environment. make it real.
If communications is an issue in general – very often picked out because of numerous other “issues”, then the culture is also at risk, and it “existing”, per se, will not fix the underlying issues?