Creating a culture is never easy, and maintaining it is no walk-in-the-park either. We have found that the following five tools were instrumental in helping us build and maintain our culture. Check them out!

1. North Star - Instead of a mission or purpose statement, we have a North Star. Our North Star is something that keeps us pointed in the right direction. We landed on the idea after our mission (to be an admired ecommerce company) was continuously scrutinized due to a lack of way to measure achievement. So, we decided that a North Star made more sense for us. From there, we would come up with a mission that we wanted to achieve in the upcoming year. We wanted that mission to be measurable while still pointing towards our North Star.

2. Core Values - We believe a clearly defined set of values is the most important key to a winning culture. Maybe you have 4, maybe you have 8, maybe you have 20. A lot of “consultants” will tell you that you shouldn’t have more than 5. In our opinion, you can have as many or as few as you want- the key is that they are easy to understand and are actually put to use. Don’t just put the values up in the lobby because someone told you that you needed values. Create them and use them in every single decision you make in your business.

3. Personality Profiles - For 5 years, we have used a personality profile (Culture Index) to help us hire and get to know each other better. Each employee fills out the survey and then gets a unique profile with 4 plotted points. The profile measures autonomy, sociability, pace and detail. Knowing how social or patient your coworkers are can really help with working relationships. If you know someone is an introvert, you might not invite them to a networking event or keep them in long meetings. If someone has little detail, you might not hire them to be an accountant or an auditor. We believe in it so much that we put employee profiles on the outside of office doors and on our company intranet.

4. Cheers for Peers - We use a tool called TINYpulse that allows us to send employe engagement surveys to our employees as often as we want. In addition to that, TINYpulse has a platform that allows employees to give props to their coworkers. It’s super simple and is sent directly to the person who is receiving the props. We then take those and put them on a feed on our intranet and our internal video boards so everyone can see them. It’s easy to do and really makes people feel appreciated.

5. All-Staff Meeting - It’s hard for everyone in your organization to be in the loop on what is going on with the big items in the business. We get together quarterly with the whole company and talk about the business. We make it fun with a few games and awards for the employees, but also talk about important business matters. We used to do it for around four hours, then it went to two hours and now we are able to get it done in an hour. We do it in our cafe and have some snacks and drinks during the meeting. It’s a great way to communicate to everyone as a whole in a very relaxed and comfortable setting.

Instead of talking about methods that work, these are 5 things that you can actually implement yourself. If you have suggestions for other tools or want some more information on these tools, please comment or email us at contact@proathleteinc.com.