How Small Businesses Can Maintain Company Culture While Growing

BANGALORE, INDIA: Two approaches can be taken up to address the speed bumps as they crop up in business, and they can be useful to other fast-growing start-ups: communication and measurement.

It's important to stop the downward spiral before it goes too far. If you wait too long, the solutions are harder to find, and you run the risk of losing good people. If you notice more complaints or confusion than usual – or from key people who rarely exhibit frustration – it's time to take action.

The first thing to do is spend more time communicating with and listening to your employees. Identify the influencers and loudmouths and take them out to dinner. Hold town hall meetings with your whole team, and let them voice their complaints. By understanding deeply what the problems are, they were able to work together to find solutions. This doesn't mean that your company has to be run as a democracy, but the best compromises regularly come out of heated debates and discussions.

Also read: Entrepreneurship - The value of values

Only after you've taken this listening tour, convene your management team. Make sure they're all on the same page and can show a unified front when communicating back to your employees. There may be things you have to do that the employees aren't happy with, but it will help if the entire management team can articulate the reasons and be transparent.

The second step to be taken is a measurement system. Measuring culture is hard, but finding ways to gauge employee happiness helps us understand when we've hit a speed bump and if we have successfully moved beyond one.

Use internal surveys or interviews to get a baseline. Find out why people enjoy working at your company and what they value the most about being there. Use this information to keep an eye on what matters most to your employees.

Consider using tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS), which allow you to have a consistent measurement of how happy your employees are. HubSpot runs an internal NPS every six months, asking its employees just two questions: "How likely would you be to recommend working at the company  to a friend?" and "Why?" It ensures a consistent measurement over time and allows for the top concerns to bubble up.

Speed bumps are part of any quickly growing, fast-moving company. Deal with them quickly and effectively – before they slow you down.

Source: www.blogs.hbr.org