How do you sustain the workplace culture you’ve painstakingly developed as you start scaling your business?

Scaling a business is a great milestone to celebrate and look forward to. But it comes with the potential downside of losing your workplace culture along the way. 

Maintaining your organisation’s values, standards and unique qualities can be challenging as you expand your business and standardise processes. Once you start forming layers of leadership structures, you gradually lose direct influence over people’s behaviours, social expectations and decision-making. 

This is a natural result of delegating the mantle of leadership (and how to develop a good workplace culture) to local managers. Training your senior executives to be culture ambassadors of your company can prevent the loss of culture when you start scaling your business. Developing strategies can help you scale your business while maintaining your workplace culture. 

7 strategies to scale your business and maintain your workplace culture

We’ve shortlisted seven strategies you can use to maintain your workplace culture as you start scaling your organisation.

1. Establish your workplace culture

What are the qualities of your workplace culture?

It’s important to have a clear idea of what you want for your workplace culture: the ideals and values you want to imbue and implement, as well as the standards of excellence that you want to pass on to your employees.

Ultimately, you need to make sure that your workplace culture inspires and motivates people. When your staff members are passionate about the workplace culture, they’re incentivised to uphold and maintain the organisational values you’ve established.

The first step to creating a positive and solid workplace culture is ensuring that your team can work harmoniously together. As a business owner, you can celebrate diversity and inclusivity in the workplace by developing a multigenerational workforce, wherein employees from different walks of life can come together and work towards common organisational goals. 

2. Incorporate your culture into your hiring processes

Introducing your workplace culture into the hiring process ensures that your potential candidates already have a good idea of what to expect from your organisation. This helps you find candidates that uphold the same values and qualities. 

So, what do you need in your hiring process to generate insight into their tech savviness, critical thinking abilities and interpersonal skills?

Alex Haimann, the head of business development at Less Annoying CRM, and his team developed a hiring process that effectively helps business leaders find the right people for the right roles. 

Haimann’s hiring process consists of four parts:

• Questions – Standard interview questions such as “What are your biggest strengths and weaknesses?” can be unreliable because they don’t sufficiently reveal a candidate’s competencies. You need questions that test for preparation, critical thinking and communication skills.
  • Asking the candidates what they know about the company can test for preparation, while asking open-ended questions about how they would complete a task can test for critical thinking. 
  • You can measure a candidate’s communication skills by formatting specific questions as instructions (e.g. “Teach us about one of your hobbies or passions as if we don’t know about it.”)
• Technical skills – Schedule a meeting between the candidate and an existing employee who works in the same field or department. The team member can gauge a candidate’s expertise and interest in the field through role-specific questions. You can follow this with a short exercise to test their technical and collaborative skills.
• Writing samples – A writing test before or after the initial interview can give you a clear idea of a candidate’s writing and communication skills under pressure without extensive editing or outside assistance. 
• Games – This is a unique and innovative way to test how a potential candidate interacts with prospective colleagues daily. Engineering peer interactions around board games that encourage people to work towards a common goal introduces an element of collaboration and shows potential candidates that you have a great workplace at hand.

You can incorporate elements of Haimann’s hiring process into yours so that you can showcase more of your organisational culture while ensuring that you find the right people for your company.

3. Invest in your team

Your employees are your greatest asset in the business. They help you reinforce the culture you’ve established in the company. Investing in your most trusted staff members ensures that you have work-culture ambassadors who uphold the values and vision of your business.

Investing in your employees also ensures that your staff are consistently motivated and satisfied with the work they’re doing in your organisation. This can be incredibly rewarding as you gain staff buy-in once you start scaling your business. Your staff members can be significant contributors to your organisation’s growth as you keep moving forward.

4. Develop leadership programs

It’s important to pass the baton to younger staff members who can eventually take the lead and support you in scaling the business. They will also be responsible for upholding the workplace culture you’ve created in the organisation. 

You can develop successful leadership programs by:

• Focusing on holistic growth
• Providing opportunities for self-reflection
• Investing in short, intensive programs
• Addressing psychological barriers to growth
• Embracing online learning (i.e. web seminars and online workshops)

Incorporating these aspects into your programs will empower staff members to lead and be more effective in their respective fields.

5. Schedule regular check-ins

Your staff can be a great source of insight into how you can maintain your workplace culture as you start scaling. Regular check-ins are a great opportunity to hear their thoughts and feedback about any changes that you’ve implemented. 

Consistently communicating with your teammates provides clarity on both sides, allowing you and your employees to set expectations for each task or long-term goal you’ve set. Regular check-ins can also increase staff engagement, inspiring employees to be more invested in their work and their professional relationships with the rest of the team.

By taking the time to check in on your employees, you show that you value their professional growth, which also allows you to guide and mentor them in their development.

6. Be involved and active with your team

It’s important to be a part of your staff’s professional development in the workplace. Don’t set yourself apart from them, especially when it’s time to start scaling. Continue to give time for team building with your staff. It’s important to invest in the strategies that will help you create high-performing teams and still find opportunities to bond with them.

7. Optimise your technology

Technology is rapidly advancing and businesses must leverage this to their advantage. Using the right tech can help businesses scale more effectively. Your business can be positively impacted by using technology as it supports you in achieving your goals and objectives, enabling you to develop solutions that are tailored to your needs.

Implementing these strategies can help you scale your business effectively while ensuring that you maintain the workplace culture you’ve built with your employees.

Contact us and we will help you scale your business while maintaining your workplace culture.