Maintaining company culture isn't just about perks like food and happy hours; it's about work-life balance, continuous improvement, open communication, teamwork, and empowerment. Focusing on these aspects can create a strong, positive culture and prevent high employee turnover.
Upholding company culture.
This is one of my responsibilities as the Operations Administrator at EchoUser. Well, that sounds easy: provide food, coffee, in office yoga, and company happy hours! DONE! But then I got to thinking… some of the biggest tech giants not only in the world, but right here in the Bay Area, provide their employees with all-you-can-eat cafeterias, made to order coffee, on-site gyms, and bottomless kegerators, yet they still have high turnover and unhappy employees. Why? What more could they want?
As I was searching the Internet for possible reasons, I came across an article, called Entrepreneurs Need to Focus on Culture, Not Perks, written by Greg Besner, the Founder and CEO of CultureIQ.
This made me realize I’ve been misdefining perks as culture and I’m not the only person getting these two confused. Yes, they can be tied together, but they still have their own entity.
Here at EchoUser…
We value a healthy work/life balance, continuous self-improvement, open communication and teamwork, creativity, and empowerment – all important components that build a strong company culture.
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Some examples of these include:
A healthy and flexible work-life balance.
EchoUser understands employees have a life outside of work. We trust our employees will get their work done while also enjoying a healthy work/life balanced life.
Our quarterly mentorship program.
During our company strategy off-site last year, we developed “action teams”. One of the action team’s goals was to create an internal mentorship program in order to strengthen our skills and learn from our peers. We are currently in the alpha phase of the mentorship program and are receiving positive feedback from all participants.
Open communication and teamwork.
It is not an uncommon sight to see groups of people gathering in an open space and bouncing ideas off of each other.
Any Experience projects.
Employees are able to work on projects that they are interested in, where they see a need for improvement or just want to do more research on. This empowers our employees and allows them to work on something they have a personal interest in. Ask us about our “Hello Toilet” and “Shut-up and Woof!” projects!
Most importantly…
We have fun with each other!
These are just a few of the things that help build a strong and positive company culture and how we are doing it at EchoUser!
