How to Grow Your Small Business while Preserving Company Culture

As your business grows, it’s crucial to preserve the elements of your company culture that you and your employees value. Here are some ideas of how you can do this.

Stick to Your Values

Write down your company values and make sure each employee has a copy of them. They should also be displayed prominently throughout your business location. Then, identify a few long-time key staff members who “live” or personify those values. These key people are your “culture champions,” and they can be helpful in multiple areas — from hiring to sounding the alarm if the business goes off course. These champions should be very visible within your organization so that everyone knows that the way these people do business is the way everyone should do business. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone has to be clones of everyone else! Rather, there are essential values within your business that everyone should uphold.

Hiring is Incredibly Important

As businesses grow, hiring can become a real challenge. In a rush to get more people on your team, you may hire someone who just doesn’t “fit.” It’s important not to compromise on your culture and values in a rush to fill new roles. If necessary, you can outsource part of the hiring process to a recruiter who can narrow down the field for you, and then you and your team can make the final hiring decisions.

Stay Interviews

You’ve likely heard of exit interviews, but how many “stay” interviews have you conducted? None? Well, it’s time to start! Staff turnover is detrimental to business success. It costs time and money, and you often lose a great employee. But if you are conducting stay interviews at least once a year, you can reduce employee turnover and even boost employee happiness. Check-ins are used to gather feedback on areas that can be improved, and they also show your employees that it’s important to you that their voices be heard. Better still, stay interviews can improve the employee experience over time because issues get resolved more quickly and with less drama.

Feeling Like a Team

Another reason that company culture is so important is camaraderie. Staff members who feel connected to their co-workers and feel like everyone is working for the good of the business are much more likely to plan a long-term future with the company.

Establishing a great workplace early on and then continuing to put your culture first as the company grows will help you avoid the growing pains that many businesses fail to navigate.