Building great company culture is one of those amorphous goals that all companies – startups and traditional – are constantly striving for. Each company has to define for itself whether company culture means Nerf guns and foosball tables or business casual and jeans on Friday.
One great way to determine what, exactly, your company culture is going to look like is by talking directly to employees. While you can accomplish this by “casually” draping yourself over their desks like the boss from Office Space, most of you probably, a) don’t have time for that and, b) aren’t creeps.
If you want to be a little more 2014 about it, check out Follow Company, which is a startup currently participating in the Black Slide incubator that aims to help company leaders build stronger relationships with their teams.
No Nerf guns necessary.
CEOs who want to find out more about what’s going on with their teams can set up Follow.Company to send out questions three times per week. Monday is the serious stuff: each team member reports on what they’re working on. They can either talk about what they’re going to do that week or review the work from the previous week.
Follow Company Team: Viktor Magic, Robert Pohuba, & Tomas Tatarko
Mid-week is time to ask your employees what they really think. Ask them how they’re feeling about the company, the management, and the company culture you’re working on building together. Because this is a slightly more sensitive subject, people can choose to send private responses or post them to the community feed.
Friday is funday, obviously, and this is when you can take the time to get to know your employees on a more personal level. Ask for tips about their favorite movies or books, share random facts, or really just come up with any fun way for everyone to connect.
An awesome online hangout.
Follow Company also has an activity feed that they claim is “what employees will use instead of Facebook to kill their free time.” Acting as a hub for people to congregate online, the activity feed is like a virtual water cooler for your team. Folks can chat about what they’re working on and what they’re interested in, and generally build stronger bonds.
And you can totally afford it.
Follow.Company is free – for now. Their proposed future pricing plan is only $5.00 per employee per month, a price that’s totally affordable for most startups, even if they’ve grown pretty big.
Company culture isn’t some after thought that can be tacked on when your company has grown beyond just you and your co-founder; it’s something that needs to be developed from the minute you buy your first domain name. Let Follow Company help you do it right.
Photo Credits
Follow.Company
