“You tend to play chicken and egg with some aspects of the business. For example, do you grow the business so that you can invest in educating your people, or do you educate your people so you can grow your business?” asks Peter Borg-Neal, founder of the award-winning Oakman Inns & Restaurants, which was named in The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For earlier this year.
Borg-Neal has attempted to answer that question himself with the development of “Oakmanology” – the company’s own ‘online craft academy’. He says: “It’s a natural human desire to want to learn new things, to develop new skills and to become more capable of succeeding in life. I sincerely hope that Oakmanology will give everybody at Oakman Inns the opportunity to do just that.”
I highlight Oakman above, but I could easily have namechecked Loungers, Wahaca, Nando’s and City Pub Company – to give four examples of companies that have got to the core of their respective cultures to allow them to develop a clear point of difference between their competitors.
For Nick Collins, managing director at Loungers, the challenge has been to follow on the footsteps of founders who have already set up a successful culture. He says: “It is their culture, but it doesn’t belong to them anymore, it belongs to the c1,500 people who work in the business.” That doesn’t stop the whole management team making it to every opening.
Whatever the options for the group, including a possible IPO, Collins is keen that the culture play is kept intact, aided by what the company calls its “Glue Crew” – a mixture of senior and junior employees that the company uses as a bellwether or steering group of how the group’s culture is developing.
As with Loungers (Loungefest) and Soho House (House Festival), the most eye-catching thank you from Wahaca to its staff is its now annual all-day Day of the Dead festival, which this year say the company cater for c5,000 people. Co-founder Mark Selby is rightly proud of the fact the company “somehow nails staff recruitment”. He says: “We had someone leave the other day to work at a rival company and returned within two weeks and said ‘I am sorry I left’. She was a great manager and we were sorry to see her leave but our ops team said she would be back – and they were right. We didn’t have to chase.”
The machine that is Nando’s drives on in terms of sales and expansion, but is continually fuelled by the group’s investment in its culture. For the company that comes from the management team and if that isn’t up to speed, changes will be made, and have been made, as witnessed by the company quietly reconfiguring its top team under managing director UK & Ireland Rob Papps over the last 18 months. I understand that a recently employee survey by the company received replies from 90% of its workforce, with a higher percentage praising the brand’s working environment.
With a culture that puts front-line staff at the heart of the company’s growth, the City Pub Company is conscious of the need to keep its offer to staff competitive. To that end, it recently launched its inaugural company-wide profit share scheme. The scheme entitles any member of staff who has been with the group since the start of the year to get an equal share of the company profits. Alex Derrick, City Pub Co East chief executive, says: “We already had profit share schemes for managers but this was taking it forward even further. What’s great about it is that it’s split total evenly. Rupert (Clark, chief executive City Pub Co West) and myself are going to get exactly the same amount as the cleaners and the KPs. It’s looking like it is going to be about £300 a head.”
All four highlight a further part of the Oakman Inns’ ethos – ‘be the best you can be’, an ethos that to work needs to be embraced by everyone from team members to chief executive. This is the year when management needs to be seen on the shop floor, not just paying lip service but showing employees the whites of their eyes.
It’s true that tangible perks can lure new staff, but without an established culture that defines the character of a company, that new employee might not be so impressed to work there after the initial excitement of an onsite table tennis machine and all-you-can-eat-for-free card wears off. 95% of Millennials (18-34 year olds) – that key employee demographic, say that friends are the most credible source of product information. Therefore, it seems best way to hire is communicating the culture by reflecting your values through your actions. So what would work better for the personal nature of this generation, which has a disinterest in one-way communication, hearing from a friend that “All I have received from my boss is a payslip and an email” or “Our boss was in yesterday for is weekly/monthly visit and listened to my idea about…”
If you’ve spent a lot of time recently focusing heavily on growth and bringing in new employees, it might be time to take a step back to see what kind of culture is emerging. Finding that time whilst everyone in the industry is running at a standstill to stay competitive is another challenge.
It’s clear that employers want to get the best return on their investment – or, in this case, the best return on a new hire. But think about the reverse of that: besides a paycheck, what are your employees getting out of this exchange? People are your, this industry’s greatest asset, and have the ability to help your culture thrive or kill it altogether. The introduction of the Living Wage should be viewed as an opportunity to enhance your company’s reputation as one of the sector’s/country’s top employers. It’s time to step up to the plate on culture.
