Creating Company Culture

By Lenny Ventimiglia III, President, Apollo Image Enhancement Center, Houston, Texas

"We Are Family."

Two of the most challenging tasks as a business owner are keeping your team happy and keeping them together for years. Employee retention can be very difficult, but there are many strategies you can implement into your own business to improve team morale and listen to the needs of each member of the team. At Apollo, our top employees have been with us for 40, 18, and 17 years respectively. We could not have sustained success all these years without them. As cliché as it sounds, we truly are more of a family than a team.

Aside from obvious things like way-above-average compensation and treating people the right way, here are some of the best strategies we have learned to build company culture and retain our team members:

1. Surveys

Engaging with your team using a survey is a great way to let everybody voice their true opinions. Some people do not want to speak up in front of others or feel uncomfortable sitting down face-to-face to say how they feel. By sending a survey, each member of the team gets a chance to put together a thoughtful answer. You may learn more about your business than you ever anticipated! Some of the best questions used in our employee surveys are:

• What should we start doing?

• What should we stop doing?

• What should we keep doing?

• Is there anything that you do or are asked to do that you don’t understand why we do it?

• Is there anything you do that is a waste of time that could be cut out?

• Is there something the company could do for you to make your job easier, better, or more gratifying?

I love to write down all the answers from our surveys on one page to see if any answers are consistent across the team in order to see what answer stands out as most important or the most glaring amongst the rest. Putting all the answers together can help paint a picture of how your team thinks and feels as a whole.

2. Investing In Your Team

Whether it is by time or finance, always be sure to invest back into your team as you would the company itself. Every week, our management team has a morning meeting to make sure we are all on the same page. We discuss: What is the focus of the week, what needs to be done, what orders we need to place, what problems we need to solve, and who is taking accountability for getting these things done?

Once every quarter, we meet as an entire team. We block off a couple of hours in the morning and together go out for breakfast. We have found that people are more responsive and engaged when stepping outside of the office to meet. We talk through our goals and our focus as a team for the next month, quarter, and year. Again, the objective is to give every member of the team a voice and to all be working together towards our team goals.

Financially, we invest back into the team through training and mentoring. Each year we set aside some funding for continued education. Whether it is taking the team to the yearly HairNow conference through the AHLC, sending our managers to work with business coaches, or sending stylists to classes taught by the best in the industry; we are always looking for ways to learn and improve the business. It is empowering to your team to show them that you invest in them and want to see them grow.

3. Celebrating as a Team

Keeping a team together for years and years is hard. Co-workers often spend more time together than they do with their own families, so enjoying coming to work every day and the people you around are important. Take the time to celebrate each other's birthdays and work anniversaries. Show appreciation for people staying by your side year after year and let them know how much they mean to the business.

Something as simple as a thank you card and flowers on their work anniversary can mean the world to somebody, letting them know that you recognize their contributions and are thankful for their time.

As well, celebrate achieving company goals and milestones. We can never accomplish our company’s goals without the help of every member of the team. When we reach a milestone, everybody should get the chance to celebrate and see that their contribution makes a difference. Maybe it's a team dinner, gift cards, or bonuses. Having a reward for accomplishing big goals helps everybody focus on the main task at hand, and helps the business grow more quickly when the team is bought into a common goal.

Creating a family-type environment in the workplace is not easy, but it is rewarding when properly put in place. Simple things like having a vacation policy and maternity leave policy in place help as well. The team should help take care of one another, respect each other, and work better together as a collective. Clearly stating each team member's roles and responsibilities helps with taking accountability and eliminating confusion. It is important to have everyone on the same page and know who is supposed to do what.

Our previous article in Link issue 50 was titled “Hire Slow, Fire Fast” because not everybody is the right fit for the team, you, or the company culture that has been built. Get the right people in your business first, and then do everything you can to take care of them. You will see what a difference it can make.