“Culture” is becoming a bit of a buzz word in the business world today, but business schools have been talking about investing in employees first for decades (remember the service value chain lecture from your business management course?). It‘s long been theorized that investing in employee satisfaction increases customer loyalty and overall company-wide performance–the more resources and autonomy you provide your employees, the more likely they are to feel empowered and loyal in return.

We‘ve seen the impact of our cultural investments through increased employee satisfaction and reduced turnover. In fact, a recent company-wide survey conducted by a third-party found that over 93% of our employees said CLEARLINK is a GREAT place to work. Even more sensational, however, is that the same survey indicated the large majority of our employees believe they are personally responsible for creating our company culture.

While an overall cultural direction for the company has to be driven and supported from the top-down, our experience has been that it takes off like wild-fire if employees are given the opportunity and autonomy to influence company culture. Our executive team set the tone for a results-focused, fun, and friendly workplace from the beginning, but the freshness of our culture depends heavily on every CLEARLINKer. We won‘t pretend all of the ideas are good (like buying a company bus that still sits incapacitated in our parking lot), but we have had some great times thanks to ideas from employees in every department. Several from the last year include:

• Geek Appreciation Week by Jason Webster, EVP Technology
• CLEARLINK Stock Exchange (CLSE) by Josh Harris and Matt Ure, Brand Managers
• The Greg Den by Greg Swenson, Operations Manager

• Break a Guinness World Record by Mauri Love, EVP Culture
• Bucket List Trip of A Lifetime Award by Phil Hansen, CEO
• 1st Annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest by the Quality Assurance Team
• The Happy Dance by Bianca West, Director of Training and Marc Hansen, 360 Fit Ninja
• Employee Rock star t-shirts by Rob Conti, Creative Director
• Coin Dive by Aaron Hansen, Brand Manager
• Movember Competition by Celeste Chaney, Project Manager

A few things that help facilitate the exchange of ideas:

1. Have a team of designated people who oversee the company culture. The presence of a culture team alone tells employees that the company values its culture, and designating a team of people provides a clear path for decision making and resource allocation for cultural ingenuities.
2. Use employee task forces. Getting a wider set of employees involved in planning and carrying out events spreads ownership of the culture—the more the merrier. We have one group to thank for the donkey at our Cinco De Mayo celebration this year and another to thank for the massive water fight we plan to have at our summer party this August.
3. Loosen the reins. Let your employees make the culture their own. For example, we don‘t formally support cyber-hugging between our executive management team, but when it happens, we go with it. As the following email correspondence demonstrates, there‘s no surer way to spread a culture of cheer and caring than through a cyber-hug-fest. Who knew?