Attract the Right People With the Right Company Culture

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Attract the Right People With the Right Company Culture

“Do you have a problem with employee recruitment?” Chuck Williams, contact center manager of Senske Services in Kennewick, Washington, asked the group at Solutions 2020, Real Green Systems annual conference, during his session on “How to Attract the Right People with the Right Company Culture.”

A good majority of the session attendees raised their hands.

“Do you have a problem wtih employee retention?” Again, hands were in the air.

Finally, he asked, “Do you have a problem with customer retention?” Hands raised.

company culture
Chuck Williams, Senske Services, at Solutions 2020, Real Green Systems conference.

“Think you have these specific problems? Nope,” Williams said. “Actually, you have a company culture problem. Those are just the symptoms.”

“And just like when you’re sick, you can’t just attack the systems, you have to attack the core problem,” he emphasized.

Don’t have a company culture in place? Williams did a challenge with the group on how they can create company values that drive culture. And he encouraged them to take the exercise home to their companies.

List Your Top Performers & Their Best Attributes

First, Willams asked the room of lawn and landscape professionals to list some of their top performers, people who were considered the best at each respective company.

Next, he asked people to list each person’s best attributes. Some of the words included:

  • Attacks new responsibilities
  • Dependable
  • Assertive
  • Loyal
  • Early
  • Empathetic
  • Good follow-through
  • Dependable
  • Supportive
  • Organized
  • Great communication
  • Continues education/wants to learn
  • Work ethic

Narrow Down Those Attributes

Once you and your team come up with this list of your top performers’ best attributes, you must now combine the words that are similar and narrow those down to the top seven.

In the group exercise, the final seven words attendees came up with were work ethic, caring, leader, innovative, assertive, humble and visionary.

Life-Giving Statement

Next, it’s time to add a life-giving statement to each attribute.

A life-giving statement should have two things: define who you are and what you do. And it should be no longer than two to three sentences. “If people can’t remember it, they won’t use it,” Williams explains. “You have to make it snackable, so it’s consumable or digestable.”

Williams shared an example from his own company. To Senske Services, caring means: “We are people who want to bring good to others. We will show kindness even if it isn’t returned. And we want people to walk away better than when they started. We are caring.”

How This Helps Company Culture

Creating clearly defined values and life-giving statements giving employees a guide on what drives the company forward and how they relate.

“Great values drive great culture,” Williams says. “If you focus people on something to connect to and are able to measure that, then that drives your culture.”

And when your people feel that connection to your company values, they share their experiences. “And that,” Williams said, “is the best recruiting tool you can have.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Real Green Systems is an NALP supplier member.