The days of the angry boss yelling at employees to work harder and faster are gone! To get the best out of employees, companies have to cultivate a workplace culture that is inspiring, comfortable, and gets people fired up to come to work every day. Here are 4 companies that understand this concept and created incredible workplace cultures!
Cisco’s Caring Culture
Even though Cisco is a tech giant, it continues to emphasize that it is the people behind the tech that makes Cisco such a success. This isn’t just talking – if you look at the average employee tenure, it is almost 8 years, which is way higher than the industry average. Cisco is committed to ensuring that all employees feel accountable, empowered and take pride in belonging to Cisco.
To achieve its cultural goals, Cisco focuses on 3 key areas: environment, characteristics, and experience. As a part of its promotion of a harmonious environment, Cisco expects all employees to conduct themselves with dignity, respect, fairness, and equity. Cisco takes its diversity extremely seriously and has established the Full Spectrum Diversity foundation to ensure employees from minority, and historically marginalized backgrounds don’t face prejudice in the workplace. This foundation seeks to ensure that employees from minority backgrounds receive the support they need to develop and thrive at Cisco.
Cisco’s characteristic aspect of its workplace culture is focused on living up to the company’s principles. These principles include honesty, generosity, and hard work. In addition, Cisco always makes a big point of running community events and producing high-quality products that benefit consumers. The last aspect of Cisco’s workplace culture, experience, is all about how employees work together on a daily basis. Every employee is encouraged to grow, overcome challenges, and use their skills to make a positive contribution to the company.
Everyone Is Equal At NVIDIA
NVIDIA is committed to having a major impact on the world through addressing key technological issues in every industry imaginable, including cutting-edge science. NVIDIA’s workplace culture plays a tremendous role in making this a reality. This company understands that every employee has an important role in its success and provides them with extensive support to help them thrive in a very challenging environment. NVIDIA always goes out of its way to thank employees for their contributions.
NVIDIA is strongly against any form of office politics and is very anti-hierarchy. This company structures its team around projects and skills rather than the classic manager and employee mode. NVIDIA also promotes risk-taking and failure as it views these as critical steps in development and innovation, particularly in the tech sector. The tech giant also ensures all employees treat each other with respect and emphasize that everyone has an important part to play in the company’s success.
NVIDIA is passionate about creating a culture where employees can express their skills and complete projects that they are passionate about. This company is known for offering incredible pay and benefits. NVIDIA makes a point to create a relaxed and flexible workplace that is very family-friendly.
NVIDIA isn’t just satisfied with creating cutting-edge technology. It also wants to give back to the community. This company has its employee-run charitable foundation and runs regular annual charity events, such as helping children excel in math and science to local cleanup initiatives.
Adobe Is All About Diversity
Abode didn’t become a world-renowned digital marketing company through its products alone. Adobe’s incredible workplace culture, which focuses on education, diversity, and creativity, also played a leading role in its success. In 2018, Adobe was named the World’s Best Place to Work in large part because of its commitment to constant learning and valuing each employee as an individual.
Adobe boasts one of the most diverse workforces where minorities are given a leading voice, and everyone is encouraged to share their opinions, no matter how divergent they may be. Abode always encourages employees to practice self-improvement, and all employees have access to additional training and growth programs. It also has a range of online education courses and even mentorship programs.
Adobe wants all of its employees to take leadership roles and play an active part in keeping the company’s workplace culture strong. Another interesting aspect of Abode’s workplace culture is its commitment to creativity. If an employee wants to explore a new idea, the company will give them unlimited snacks and a debit card loaded with $1,000 with no pre-approval process required.
Hubspot Is Living Up To Its Culture Code!
In a quest to build a transparent workplace culture and truly live up to its ideals, Hubspot decided to not only produce a 128-page Culture Code deck but share it with the public! The marketing experts wanted to hold themselves accountable by letting the world know what they are trying to achieve. The marketing expert’s workplace code is based around a catchy acronym, HEART which stands for Humble, Empathetic, Adaptable, Remarkable, Transparent.
Here are some key highlights from Hubspot’s culture code:
- Culture and recruiting are essential to each other and intertwined
- Culture is inevitable, so it is your duty to create one you are proud of
- Meet customer needs not just to make them happy but to make them succeed
- Power is attained through sharing information and transparency rather than being secretive
- There are no doors at Hubspot; any employee can walk up to another employee at anytime
- No group punishments
- The goal is results and not where they were produced
- Influence is not tied to role or seniority
- “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
- It is better to regularly fail than never try
Before revealing its culture code to the world, Hubspot asked its employees for extensive feedback. Hubspot wanted its employees to be the driving force behind its culture to create a sense of trust and greater buy-in. The marketing specialist’s plan to make the culture code public wasn’t just to keep them accountable. It was also a sharp marketing plan that resulted in the company receiving additional publicity. So far, the code has been viewed over 4 million times!
To understand why Hubspot has such a strong workplace culture, check out what Katie Burke, Chief People Officer of Hubspot, had to say: “Culture is an organic product with a pulse.” It is the responsibility of every employee of Hubspot to acknowledge the team’s culture and contribute. Hubspot’s unwavering commitment to workplace culture has played a key role in the company crossing the $500,000,000 revenue mark!
Conclusion
Without a strong workplace culture, a company is made up of individuals who will never be capable of coming together to achieve big goals. Strong and successful workplace culture must make employees feel inspired, valued, and challenged. Companies such as Cisco, Adobe, and Hubspot have done an incredible job building cultures that have helped take their businesses to the next level. If you want to create an enviable workplace culture, remember to focus on building an environment that you would be excited to work in no matter your role!
