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Corporate Culture: Tips to keep it in shape

5 Oct 2021

In recent times you may have heard a lot about corporate culture and its importance for the success of the company and the talent retention. While most companies and startups are clear on the concept, many find it difficult to put it into practice. If this is your case, stay and read this. In this post we gather tips from three experts in corporate culture and transmission of values: Patricia FormentPeople Manager at Holdedthe startup that offers a technology for integrated business management; Paula FerrerHead of People at Cobee, a platform to automate benefits and flexible team compensation; and Nitya FajardoRegional Sales Manager for Southern Europe and Latin America at Factorial, software for the digitization of human resources departments.  Here we present the lessons learned from three success stories and how they have managed to grow and, at the same time, maintain the company culture in good health, from its founding as a startup to the moment of expansion in which the three scaleups currently find themselves.

  • Define values with a collective exercise

Our company's values define its soul and must be mission-oriented, according to People Manager Patricia Forment. Corporate culture must follow a roadmap set by the founding team that takes into account both where we have come from and where we are going. However, for this second process, for the path we want to follow, it is very important to have the team's input, which is why the experts recommend that the values be defined through a brainstorming exercise to which all departments are invited.

  • Include corporate culture in your Scorecard

For Paula Ferrer "the The main asset of a company is not the technology or the processes, since they are replicable, but what makes companies successful is the culture, the type of people they have, how they work and how they interact with each other". Therefore, it is very important that in the hiring process we make sure that the candidates are aligned with us and that they vibrate in the same direction. To this end, the degree to which they are in tune with our company culture should be one of the indicators of our Scorecard. 

  • Learn how to communicate values

To ensure that the corporate culture permeates the team and is not lost, it is essential to know how to transfer the DNA of the founding team to the rest of the departments. To do this, according to Nytia Fajardo, it is essential to provide managers with the tools they need to transmit it. It is also essential to evaluate whether it fits and whether it has been understood with surveys, forms and even informal talks.

  • Defend them!

Once we have achieved all this, we have to know that on the road to success there will come moments of change that could shake our corporate culture. The purchase of our startup by another group or the entry of a new investment are some of the situations in which we have to be transparent and explain what our values are. The goal is to conduct a values check and make sure that these values can be aligned. If you've been left wanting to learn more insights, here you can watch the conversation we had with them at the Startup Talk: Company's culture - from startup to scaleup at Aticco Bogatell. This conference has taken place thanks to the collaboration of Upbizor. 

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