Recruiting and Building Culture: A Roadmap for any SMB. (Ps. We are hiring!)
The challenges SMB (Small Businesses) face in 2019/2020 in recruiting and building culture to grow their business center around two core components core values and company culture. In this episode we discuss 7 steps to create a roadmap for your team building process. Tune in.
Recruiting and Building Culture: A Roadmap for any SMB (P.S. We’re Hiring!)
Good afternoon, Michael Winn, Chief Digital Officer of Digital Opps, a division of RB Oppenheim Associates. Thanks for joining in today on the digital marketing podcast and video where we talk about digital strategies to grow your business. Today, I want to talk about recruiting and building culture a roadmap for any small business and I’d almost like to have a subtitle here of P.S. we’re hiring. Very exciting things are happening in our agency! But I think what I really want to frame this around is an article that Jessie Johnson and one of our team members shared with me and it really fits perfectly for those of you who have followed the video podcast. We’ve been going through the book, Traction by Gina Whitman and it takes your company through creating your core values, creating your core focus, your marketing strategies, ten-year goal, three-year goal, one-year goal, and so on. And it’s really been transformative for our agency as a result. Things always change in the agency world, we do have an immediate opening as an account executive on our team. But I think what I really want to focus in on this article that I came across was actually on LinkedIn and so it was really the inspiration behind today’s set.
So let’s dive right into the roadmap, really for any small business to recruit well and build culture and those two things are really important. Especially in 2019, we look forward to 2020 as your company continues to grow, we’re going to have different cultures. And in different viewpoints, world viewpoints as millennials come into different roles within your company; as Gen X begins and finds different roles in your company while boomers are moving forward and looking at retirement very closely. So all of those things really have an impact.
Step One: Define Your Purpose
So let’s talk about step number one. I think the most important thing and definitely we’ve learned as an agency ourselves is number one: really define why it is you do what you do, what is your purpose, what is your call, your core focus, why do you do what you do, and then combine what that is, what are your core values and this was something that we spent a lot of time on over the last couple of weeks within our own agency. We really looked at and came up collectively with our core values which number one is thinking strategically, number two is being insightful and understanding, number three is being passionate, number four is being respectful, number five is being innovative and lastly number six is being visionary. Those are the the characteristics of the team members that are part of Digital Opps and RB Oppenheim Associates. Those are the core characters and now while one of our team members may be a little bit more heavy in the strategic, another member might be more in the visionary, that’s kind of my role. Collectively those are our core values and sort of the last part to step number one. Which is having built on that foundation, what does the future look like? And I think a lot of companies make the mistake and we’re guilty of it, I mean we’ve been in business for over thirty years and in the beginning we had our mission statement and we had our core values and the reality is the day to day stuff gets put on priority and often times you can lose part of that. So maybe your small business has been around for three years or thirty years, it doesn’t matter you need to make sure you have step one down which is let your people know why you’re doing what you’re doing, what your core values are, and what the future looks like.
Step Two: Current Company Culture
Number two is your current culture, so if you look at your current culture and anything I could change change. It’s actually very easy to do, but you have to define it and look at it first.
Step Three: Hire a People Person
Number three find and hire a people person. I love this. I think about Gary Vaynerchuk’s company VaynerMedia and one of his top c-level positions is Chief Heart Officer. I think that’s really important especially, if you go back and you think about as people move forward, the generation of the baby boomers compared to the millennials. Their world views and things that are important to them are totally different and having a Chief Heart Officer, a people person, as a part of your team really can make sure that your core values and your culture are in sync and are being cultivated in organically grown.
Step Four: Build Your Talent Brand
Step number four is to build your talent brand. I think this is really interesting, a talent brand. So basically we’re talking about there is what your employees think about and feel and share about your company when they talk to others and that’s so huge. We were talking with another potential new client. We were talking about recruiting and we were giving them some ideas and tactics about how to do that in a social web world. In that whole thing sort of really the retention component is what we’re talking about talent brand, building your talent brand.
Step Five: Optimize Your Hiring Process
Number five is to optimize your hiring process. This is so critical, so this is broken into four different things and again you’re gonna hear these things come up over and over in this sort of series here. Number one is to share your company culture and values in the interview process. Number two is to divide and conquer your interview process so having multiple and it could be a peer interview, it could have multiple department interviews. Don’t put all the burden on one person to handle the interviews. I love this, number three: prioritize attitude over skills and experience. That’s really something I think that’s interesting especially for small businesses, many times we need to fill the void. Especially if you’re a service based business, you need to immediately get someone in there who has in our case good writing skills, good communication skills, good media skills, and is team oriented. We’re trying to fill the very specific skill set and what we’re looking at and what the article suggests and I really think it’s great, is think about core values, first think about attitude first and then you can teach the skills. Then lastly number four, don’t hire many knees in other words, don’t try to look for someone who’s just like the person who either left or the person who’s the position is open or someone that’s just like me. Think about this as a culture ad, if there’s a piece of the culture that you want to add and you’re looking at those core values look for someone else to add to for us it would be either strategic, respectful, innovative, or visionary like those are the kinds of attitudes and characteristics we’re looking for.
Step Six: Reinforce Core Values
Number six is to look for ways to constantly reinforce core values. I love that I think about my friends Aegis Business Technology, shout out to Blake Dowling and his team over at Aegis Business Technologies, they have this little unicorn award. And it really captures like going above and beyond in really exceeding the expectation. I love the unicorn award and that’s just a simple example of a small business who reinforces culture and reinforces team oriented core value or the innovation core value. So you could come up with different ways to really reinforce your core values.
Step Seven: Measure Your Culture
Then step number seven is to measure your culture. You can do that through employee surveys, you can do that through employee referrals -where they refer someone else to come to the company, you can also look at employee rating sites. There are also those third-party sites out there that can help you really have and be honest, get a report card on how your employees feel about your company.
So again those are the seven steps or the roadmap for any small business who’s really looking to recruit and build culture in order to sustain you for the next five to ten years. So again step one why you do it, your core values, where are you going, step two observe current culture and adapt, step three like us hire but more specifically make sure you have that Chief Heart Officer who will make sure that the culture and the core values continue to move forward and cultivate, step four build your talent brand, step five optimize your hiring process, step six look for ways to constantly reinforce your core values, and step seven measure your culture.
Guys, thank you so much for your time. Don’t forget we are hiring! I hope you’ll visit our website at rboa.com and check out the opportunity there. My name is Michael Winn, I’m the Chief Digital Officer and we’ll catch you next time.