If you could describe your corporate culture in just two minutes, what would you say?
Would you state the vetted and approved corporate-speak that lives on the "About Us" page on your website or that HA uses for attracting new talent?
Would it be your mission statement or the standard "We value our Associates," or "Our Associates are our greatest asset" that every company has written somewhere?
Now I ask,would your reality match what is written? Would a visitor to your company see your words in action or would there be a disconnect?
Back in 2009, I put together our company story for a visual presentation on the walls throughout the new Growth and Innovation Center that we were about to move into that fall - who we are, where we came from, what we believe, and and what we stand for. And of course, we have this:
If you look closely, you will find some anomalies. Yes we value the individual, yes, we have an open door policy, yes all Associates are to be treated with respect and dignity, yes, we expect people to work hard and reward high performance
But, we also expect all Associates to contribute to making Beekley a "happy organization" and to have fun at work. To W. Mason Beekley, that was the most important thing and the highest measure of success for a corporation. For Mr. Beekley, maintaining our corporate culture was as important as the bottom line.
He firmly believed that when people who love what they do and love where they work, success is a given. Hire the right people, treat them well, and they in turn, will treat both customers and the company well. He wasn't wrong. Although that quote was penned in 1984, they merely codified the secret sauce of a successful culture that had been in place since our founding in 1934.
Now, 32 years later, as I was compiling and editing our year in review video, it struck me as to how much our pictures taken throughout the year represent those words as well as our mission of making the lives of everyone we touch a little better.
These 2 minutes are truly a microcosm of our corporate culture. It's easy to see the happy and the fun part of our culture, but I hope you also see what I see.
A microcosm of a successful corporate culture:
I see a group of people who genuinely like each other, who work together to continuously improve and innovate - whether it's through new products, new markets, training, lean initiatives, or new channels of communication.
I see compassion and altruism shining through from fundraising events to toy drives or socks for the homeless.
I see a group of professionals who have a missionary zeal about the quality of their work - knowing that our customers' reputation and their patients' care is on the line with each product that is made, sold, and shipped.
I see an amazingly talented and creative group of people that any company would be proud to have.
In short, I see a company that strives on a daily basis to live up to it's written word to create a happy organization. I'd call that a successful corporate culture, wouldn't you?
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Mary Lang Pelton
Director of Marketing Communications
