Member Article

How growing SMEs can retain their culture

Dr Jill Miller, research adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, looks at how SMEs can manage their culture through periods of growth.

New figures from the CIPD[1] show that having a clear purpose and values is critical to the success of SMEs. Your values guide how work gets done and having a clear sense of organisation purpose helps steer your business towards achieving its goals. Overall, your culture and the way you operate influence the satisfaction and retention of your people.

However, if these values are a vibrant part of what you are “all about” they can become diluted and even disappear over time, putting the long-term success of your business at risk. Here are some top tips to help you retain your culture, values and purpose as your business grows.

1. Communicate your values in terms that mean something to your employees. Use focus groups to agree on the words that best sum up your culture and that resonate with the people who work for you.

2. Bring your values to life. Your values will only remain part of your culture if employees genuinely understand what they mean in terms of attitudes and behaviours.

3. Tell your story. Ensure that your employees understand the history of your business and how you got to where you are today as well as their role in building its future. This will help increase their engagement and sense of ownership. For example, devise training or an induction for new starters that includes a section on the company’s journey so that your story is being told regularly and consistently.

4. Avoid introducing processes that are at odds with your values. For example, if your values include innovation or great customer service, introducing cumbersome forms or lengthy sign-off processes will undermine them, complicating simple tasks and impacting on customer service standards.

5. Your values and purpose need to be the golden thread through all your people practices, especially your recruitment process. When hiring new staff, think beyond just technical capabilities and look for people who fit with your culture and whose personal values and ways of working match those of the organisation. They are more likely to be engaged with your business and motivated to help achieve its goals.

6. Revisit, revise and refresh your succession plan with your values in mind. It is vital to prepare for key people leaving the organisation, but make sure you look at the personalities and values of potential successors as well as technical skills. You may have a pool of talented individuals to choose from, but if they don’t reflect your company’s ethos then they simply won’t thrive.

7. Look out for subtle signs that your employees are becoming less engaged with your business as you grow. This might manifest itself as employees lacking the passion they once had for the business and being less willing to go the extra mile.

8. Keep communicating your organisation’s values and purpose to keep them at the forefront of your employees’ minds. For example, newsletters and off-site meetings are effective ways to keep people’s attention on what you’re about as a business.

9. An effective way to keep your company’s culture and purpose alive is through ambassadors – people who work for you and who live and breathe your values. This is important as the business grows and people’s personal contact with the founder typically wanes. Senior managers who put the company’s values at the heart of their vision and strategies demonstrate what’s acceptable and encouraged “round here”, inspiring their teams to follow suit.

10. Adopt reward approaches that are in line with your culture – and that encourage the kind of behaviour you want to see.

1 Research was conducted by YouGov amongst 578 senior decision makers in SMEs between 15/04/2014 - 24/04/2014. The survey was carried out online.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by CIPD .