Creating A Culture By Design, Not By Default

How to build a company of hard-working, loyal employees

It’s hard to dismiss a company that literally applauds you and your efforts while you’re walking out of the door for the last time. But this is a common occurrence at the Apple Store. I know this because in my nearly five years at Apple, I’ve participated in several “fond farewells” myself across the country.
 

When it was my time to be on the receiving end, I remember pacing in the back of house looking around as if I was going to forget everything I had gained while working there. This feeling was new; It was like leaving my childhood home for the first time, but it was a job! I didn’t understand why I felt such a strong connection to something as trivial as an Apple Store, but I knew it was something special and I had to get to the bottom of it. How did a company make me care for it so much?
 
Considering how important culture is to a business, a sports team, a restaurant, a charity, a college, a church—you name it—it’s astounding how rarely this question is asked.

Since leaving Apple, I’ve worked with brands like Keller Williams Realty, Uber, and General Assembly helping improve their internal customer (read: employee) experiences and with each new company, I kept running into the same discovery: Nothing was designed to improve productivity or employee loyalty.
 
In fact, every cultural bullet point was the result of an employee speaking up. Every portion of the work environment was a reactionary decision and any key feature, like a ping-pong table or open floor plan, seemed to be created by default as if someone said, “I saw it in a movie and those people looked like they were having fun!” Nothing was planned.
 
This approach is common, but it does not make your employees feel the way I did about the Apple Store. If you want your employees to be hard-working and loyal, you must look at your employee experience holistically and define how you want your employees to feel at every stage. To start, look at hiring process.

Whether you’re on the human resources team at a large corporation or you’re the co-founder of a startup, you should consider how you want your organization to be perceived throughout the hiring process. The image people form of your company throughout this process will not just determine who you attract but will help ensure their long-term fit.

Look around your office. What kind of work environment have you created? Is it welcoming to people looking to join the company? When they come in to interview, would they feel comforted to see a calm, quiet, space, filled with productive, independent workers? Or are they more likely to be confronted with a high-pressure office where everyone is running around trying to meet aggressive deadlines under tight controls? There’s no right or wrong culture; what matters is how well the candidate and company mesh.

Making a successful hire depends partly on how well your offerings align with the candidate’s needs and expectations, so it’s helpful to put yourself in their shoes. If you wear them, what would you expect? Comprehensive benefits? Equity in the business? Autonomy in your work? Everything you do in the hiring process, down to the language you use in your job postings, should paint a picture of the environment they can expect.

If you want to engage the best people, you have to think through your entire hiring process from an emotional standpoint, so you can avoid discouraging, or even losing, the top applicants. You might have identified the ideal candidate, but if he or she gets too frustrated by your process, it’s game over. Actively seeking new job opportunities is already stressful enough; there’s no need to exacerbate that. It’s up to you to make sure the process is smooth and as pleasant as possible so your best candidates will reach the finish line.

Once you’ve successfully shepherded candidates through the hiring process and made your choice, you might think the hard part is behind you. In reality, though, it’s only just begun. An employee’s first day sets the tone for the rest of their career with the company, though it’s rarely treated with the importance it deserves.

New employees feel many different emotions on their first day, especially fear and excitement. Excitement for all the new opportunities and challenges that await them. Fear of the unknowns: Will they fit in? What’s expected from them and how soon? Who will they be working with the most? Where’s the bathroom? For every twenty questions that cross their mind, they may dare to ask only one, unless you create an environment where it’s okay to ask “stupid” questions.
 
Far too often, new employees are merely shown to a desk, introduced to a busy co-worker or boss, then ignored for hours as they set up their accounts and read training manuals. Often, no formal introduction to the company’s purpose or the culture has been programmed—just practical instruction on computer systems and work processes. Whatever training there is may not begin until days later, if it ever materializes, until which time the employee sits in limbo.
 
If a welcoming environment isn’t established quickly, that new employee may never quite fit in or find the emotional purpose they need to do their jobs well. If, on the other hand, you create a clear path toward assimilating into the company culture, you set them up to excel at their jobs.
 
Why have the Apple Stores achieved so much success with employee enthusiasm and loyalty? Well, their intentional effort to win that enthusiasm and loyalty begins on an employee’s first moment at an Apple Store, when the entire team applauds the new employee as they enter the room. That’s right– they applaud you in and they applaud you out. With this unexpected reception, retail employees start their career at Apple with a warm welcome immediately followed by a tour of the space and introductions along the way.
 
Apple ensures that employees start talking and engaging with one another right away. No new hires have to wander around, unaccompanied on their first day, wondering where there stroom is.
 
Once your new employee is on board, what will make them stick around? They probably made the rational decision to accept the job because they needed the money or maybe they have a friend who works for the company. Once they’re inside your doors, however, it’s time to help them get beyond the rationale by acculturating and giving them something to hold onto - something they can carry with them throughout their entire career at the company —an emotional purpose.
 
During my training at Apple, I was convinced that the company really cared more about their people than they did their products. I was puffed up by being told that Apple had a two percent acceptance rate for employees, meaning that they were pickier about who they select than most Ivy League schools. I was told that I was part of an elite team, chosen to enrich the lives of the millions of customers who walked through their doors every day.I felt I had been given a superpower, and my rational decision was swiftly transformed into an emotional purpose.
 
But don’t forget, emotional purpose is just one half of the whole; No company can succeed without productivity, too. Ultimately, the employee you’ve onboarded, enculturated, and empowered has to work eventually. So, how do you motivate them to be highly productive?

Threaten to fire them if they don’t do a good job.

Just kidding, that’s a recipe for burnout. Whether in the form of brutal deadlines or the risk of losing their job, fear forces us to tap into our survival instincts, focusing us intently on whatever threatens our well-being. However, our minds and bodies can’t deal with fear for long periods of time, and the resulting emotional drain debilitates us.

Eventually, we no longer do our best work. Not just because we burn out—but because fear diminishes our ability to come up with solutions to common challenges. Anyone who has experienced writer’s block as a deadline approached knows what I’m talking about.
Enter happiness.

When you’re burned out or blocked, sometimes you just need a little jolt of happiness to get your problem-solving skills back up to speed.That’s why you see daily yoga classes, free snacks,game rooms, and book clubs in some of the best workplaces. These perks aren’t distractions, but creative stimulants.
 
When Google began giving out free lunches to its workers, business analysts couldn’t understand how that would benefit the bottom line. But those analysts weren’t thinking ahead. Google executives had grasped the idea of “culture by design,” and they had a simple purpose. They said, in essence: “We’re giving out free lunches because it makes our employees happier and we think happier employees will work harder.” Not only did Google attract the best and the brightest, but their employees did work harder. And those employees promoted the brand, too.
 
Pretty soon more companies were giving out free lunches, massages, phones, flexible schedules, unlimited PTO, you name it. All in an effort to recreate Google’s success.But, lots of companies don’t quite get it. They believe swag and ping pong tables equal quality culture. They forget that Google’s culture belongs to Google. And Apple’s belongs to Apple. So, think to yourself, what type of culture do you want to claim?
 
If successful, a well-designed culture not only attracts and retains the best talent, but it naturally fosters a feeling of admiration within each employee, resulting in a hard-working and loyal team.

Kyle M.K., author of The Economics of Emotion, is a customer experience and leadership consultant who specializes in conflict resolution. He has revolutionized the way businesses interact with and design for their customers and employees alike. While working with and studying industry-leading companies like Apple, Disney, The Ritz-Carlton, and Starbucks, he observed the extraordinary potential of what he has dubbed “The Economics of Emotion.” Visit www.kylemk.com