Should You Create a People First Corporate Culture? 6 Steps to Take

Does a People First Corporate Culture Make Sense?
Most employees believe that a people first corporate culture makes sense.  Their argument? Employee engagement and employee happiness result in more customer loyalty and more profitable customers.

Recent research by Accenture found that almost half of CEOs are strategically putting their people first.  The results?  Those who do and hold themselves and their teams accountable for meeting their people’s needs are 1.2x more likely than their peers to project revenue “hypergrowth” of 10% or more.

Should People Really Come First?   Before Customers?  Before Investors? Before the Environment?
The short answer — it depends on your business strategy regarding whether you should invest in a people first corporate culture.  If your strategy truly puts people first, then your culture should do the same.  Any cultural misalignment will derail your strategic priorities.

Everyone Wants to Work in a Healthy Culture
Lets start with some cultural basics.  Regardless of whether you put employees, customers, or profits first, every company needs to maintain minimum levels of organizational health to thrive.  People want to work in a healthy environment.  In general, the health of an organization encompasses the well-being of your employees and their ability to function, adapt, grow, and perform.

But, Cultural Health is Just a Ticket to Play the Game
While cultural health has been proven to be necessary for success regardless of industry, it rarely, in and of itself, differentiates the performance of one company from another.  An organization must be healthy enough to be set up for success; but health alone will not set you apart from your peers.

What Does Set a Corporate Culture Apart?
Our organizational alignment research found that workplace culture accounts for 40% of the difference between high and low performing organizations.  The secret sauce of the high performance was not organizational health, but the level of alignment between the workplace culture (how things get done) and the business strategy (what gets done and why it matters).

What Matters Most?  People, Profits, Products or Customers?
So now that we know the difference between a healthy culture and an aligned culture, should your corporate culture put people first?  It depends upon your strategy and how you want to differentiate yourself in the marketplace.

Some Examples

• Products First
  Apple puts products first. Their strategy is to produce the most innovative and desired products.  They do not put their people first; but they are wildly successful.
• Profits First
  Goldman Sachs is famous for putting profits above all else; they are also one of the top firms in their industry.
• Customers First
  Amazon is known for putting customers first; they now dominate consumer retail.
• People First
  For the sixth year in a row, Google has won Fortune’s 2017 Best Company to Work For award; they believe that making workers happier really pays off.

Six Steps to Take If a People-First Culture Makes Sense for You
So if you decide that, for your unique business in your specific industry with your desired workforce and overall strategy for success, people really should come first, here are six initial big picture steps — after you assess your current organizational culture to see where you stand — to consider:

1. Reduce Layers of Management
   Excessive bureaucracy can wear anyone down. Even engaged and committed employees get discouraged when they have to wade through numerous levels, checks, and balances just to have their voices heard or ideas implemented.

   In a flatter organization, workers feel they have more influence over their job and responsibilities.  This is both engaging and empowering.

2. Simplify and Minimize Work Policies
   Practices that can be easily read and simply understood are a far better guide to desired behaviors than multi-paged tomes. Basically, you want to create a respectful workplace. That should be the expectation.

   With that philosophical umbrella, specific policies are simpler to list and define.

3. Identify and Hire Your Ideal Employees
   Know what attributes you want in your employees and then ruthlessly hire for them. Define the behavioral competencies that you know can help your company succeed and make them a central part of your employee on-boarding, career development, and performance management processes.
4. Resolve Conflict Quickly and Fairly and With Empathy
   Nip incipient conflict in the bud. The more you maintain an open environment, the less likely individual and team conflict is given a chance to grow. Encourage employees to discuss disagreements objectively with the aim of resolution.  Give employees the necessary tools to acknowledge different perspectives and to negotiate fairly.
5. Establish Personal Relationships for Team Cohesion
   When coworkers have a personal as well as a professional relationship, they are much more likely to cooperate and strive for the common goal. Recognize and reward a culture of collaboration for the good of the team.
6. Provide Development Opportunities as Part of an Individualized Career Path
   Each employee should have individual development plans and a clear path forward. What are they good at? What do they like to do? What are their ambitions?

   Find out the answers to these questions and create, together, a plan that helps each employee to learn and grow.

The Bottom Line
Assuming it makes sense for your business strategy, each of these steps takes you further toward a workplace where the employee is first priority. The good news is that we know engaged employees create loyal customers and higher profits.

If you want to learn more about whether a people first corporate culture makes sense, download The 3 Levels of a High Performance Culture that You Must Get Right to Put People First