How Does Company Culture Really Impact the Bottom Line?

Curating a company culture that promotes freethinking and a multi-generational workforce directly impacts a company’s bottom line. More companies are focusing on workplace culture and atmosphere. TruAmerica Multifamily, for instance, has hired Eryn Mack, Ed.D, as director of human resources to focus on creating a culture of independent thinkers and collaboration. Such a culture will encourage contributions to projects and produce stronger, quality work.

“Company culture has the ability to galvanize employees in a stronger company commitment through shared and equitable values,” Mack tells Globest.com. “At TruAmerica, we are laser focused on encouraging our employees to be independent thinkers and providing them with exceptional opportunities to collaborate with their co-workers in order to achieve dynamic personal and corporate results. Our employees are empowered to contribute to the full lifecycle of their work, which directly impacts the bottom line.”

While company culture has become a buzz phrase in the office sector—second only to creative office—developing a cohesive and inclusive culture shouldn’t be considered a barrier. “It is simply conditioning a team to work together and establish norms through shared values and responsibility,” says Mack. “The first step for senior leadership is to “back off” and allow people to do what they were hired to do.  Let them showcase their capabilities. The end goal is to demonstrate a responsible and linear approach between employees and senior leadership.  This leads to a healthy equilibrium of trust, empowerment, autonomy and accountability.”

While this is a growing trend, there are still slow adopters. Particularly larger companies have been hesitant to join the movement. Still, forward thinking companies understand the importance of company culture. “Larger companies appear to react slowly and they can be restricted by preferred habits developed over the long-term,” Mack adds. “Smaller companies are quicker to adopt these more agile and real-time workplaces strategies. Regardless of size, the smarter companies are examining ways to improve company culture.”

Companies looking to curate the right culture should start with recruiting the right people and promoting inclusion within. “The first step is a two-pronged approach, which addresses recruiting and curating a culture of inclusion,” says Mack. “We have moved recruitment in-house and have enabled our teams to participate in the decision of those they believe best demonstrate our core values. This approach allows for a more diverse perspective on hiring, enables ongoing creativity and reduces the time to hire.”

At TruAmerica, this is the approach that Mack is taking to create the right culture at the firm. Starting with the current workforce, she is working to promote inclusion and communication, and employees have responded enthusiastically. “To further a culture of inclusion we have taken steps to reduce barriers that restrict solution-based thinking,” she says. “We have taken a step back and enabled employees to communicate not only what is working, but just as importantly, if not more so, what is not working. This approach has been received positively by employees because of our continued commitment to close gaps in efficiency. Employees at TruAmerica appreciate the simplicity and they have embraced the ability to have more control over their experience.”