The Importance of Culture at Work

Building a culture-based company is important for success because culture is a factor in what drives workers to be committed to a goal and to strive to meet objectives. A positive workplace culture will serve to motivate and guide employees, while a negative workplace culture will distract and deter them from advancing. Building a culture-based company thus entails identifying positive attributes and values to promote within the workplace so as to provide workers with the core motivators they need to stay ahead and progressive.

It is also about filling an organization with the "cream-of-the-crop" as Bill Taylor at GameChanger Blog notes is the case with Zappos, which actually pays employees to quit (Harvard Business Review, 2008). The idea is that after hiring new workers and initiating them into the workplace culture that the organization wishes to develop, new hires have an idea of what is expected of them and what they need to do in order to succeed in the company and make the company grow. By giving new hires pay for their initiation and a $1,000 bonus should they choose to "opt out" and quit there on the spot, the company rewards those who admit right up front that they are not a good fit for the company (instead of going on with the training even though they do not feel comfortable there). The bonus essentially acts as a filter that keeps unmotivated or poorly fitting employees from taking up positions in the company. It is not a reproach against those who opt out and take the bonus, it is just a sign that not everyone is a good match with every company -- and for a company to build a strong culture, it has to be aware of what type of worker it wants to have and how it wants to be sure to grow that worker base. Targeting specific types of individuals is a key factor in building a positive workplace culture in which all employees are driven and part of a single workplace spirit that pushes and pulls workers to a company's a goal.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, builds on this concept by stating that "for us, our number one priority is company culture" (100 Interviews, 2009). In other words, "if you get the culture right," everything else follows (100 Interviews, 2009). For Hsieh, the goal of Zappos is to provide great customer service -- and building a brand name for itself is part of the process of being a great provider of customer service (the better one's reputation, the greater its ability to attract the right kind of talent and secure an even better position in the market). To do that, the company focuses on building a culture-based company that looks at how it can improve the lives of its employees, make them happy, and make them want to be at Zappos.

To achieve the culture-based company, Hsieh states that "it starts with the interviewing and hiring process" and that they hire people who "fit" the culture and fire those who do not (100 Interviews, 2009). Thus, workers are specifically selected who meet the criteria required for strengthening the workplace/company culture. It is a highly selective process and one that bars specific types of individuals from entering into the company; those who embody the ideals, characteristics and qualities that the company wants to reflect are selected -- and those who do not are not selected.

Building the culture-based company also entails creating a positive environment where, if one is having a bad day, there are those around who can help make it better by providing a positive atmosphere that can boost one's spirits and lift up one's mood so that one can more effectively reach one's goals at work.

This concept plays into the idea of empowering employees, which Bill Taylor notes is also an important tool in building the culture-based company (Harvard Business Review, 2008). Employees should be empowered, meaning that they should be given everything they need in terms of training, tools, motivation and direction to go out and work on their own, to maximize their potential as independent workers, and to show that they can perform at a high level and make significant contributions to the company. The type of empowerment that Zappos gives, for example, is that it does not oblige the workers to use scripts in their customer service and it gives them no time limits -- in other words, workers are free to spend as much or as little time working with the customer in order to satisfy that person's needs. Empowerment is a type of freedom in this sense, in that there is no manager breathing down one's back and overseeing one's every move. The workers are trusted to perform appropriately -- mainly because they are vetted in the initial introduction stage of the initiation, and those who feel that they can work within the type of culture that the company promotes are urged to stay.