Inc. magazine, the always on-point print and digital magazine for growing companies, has published a few articles in the last week on company culture that got us thinking about how critical hiring the right employees is to the small businesses we serve.
Entrepreneurs and companies come to us at different times and for different reasons, but, unsurprisingly, nearly all of our clients intend to hire employees during the year after using our service. Makes sense, right? If you’re writing a business plan, it’s probably because you’re planning on growing your business, and more work means you’ll need more people to help you.
Most often, when owners and managers think about the workers they want to hire, they think of a list of skills that they need their workers to have. Sometimes they’ll have an organizational chart laid out with a pre-ordained hierarchy of employees. Thinking ahead like this is great, and it’s just what an owner/manager has to do. But it’s not only the technical skills of an enterprise that will be defined by who a company hires. The people that take on the roles described in an organizational chart will not be simple mechanical cogs completing the tasks outlined in a job description. They will be living, breathing personalities that will define a company culture. And don’t think for a second that culture isn’t part of what makes a company successful.
Different types of workers work in different ways. More than just the skills a person has determine how they get the job done: attitudes craft action. Two of Inc.‘s articles we noted focus on how certain character traits will often line up with certain types of work. For example, if a business is going to need to perform a lot of creative work—perhaps a marketing or web design outfit, or a production studio, businesses for which we write plans very often—it would be wise to think ahead about the character traits that often go along with the creative skill set. Another factor might be working to find a balance between extroverted and introverted workers. Extroverts tend to help “raise the bar” in the office, at least in terms of communication and public goal-setting. But it turns out, studies show that more introverted workers tend to be the ones who put their noses to the proverbial grindstone to make things happen.
The cultural composition of a company will have a profound impact on what your team accomplishes. A company must be skilled and competent, but it also needs to work together. Even if you have a team of all geniuses, if they can’t coordinate, then group projects (read: your business) will never get done right. Each subsequent employee will enter into the culture created by the previous ones: the tone of your office will start to be set by the first employees you hire.
What can you do to forge the right culture for your company? Inc. has you covered on the details, too. This last article is a great interview with Paul Spielgelman, founder and CEO of BerylHealth, a hospital call-center business. We love his “10 Steps to a Remarkable Company Culture”, steps which helped him grow his company and sell it to an industry leader with a $9 billion market capitalization. Check it out, and start your business out on the path to success.
