This is the first in a series of blogs that I am going to write about the culture and environment that we have at Site Strategics. I have gotten a lot of questions from others outside of the company to actually talk to their bosses and organizations, so I figured I’d write some thoughts down to share.
I am 30 years old, as of this writing, and I haven’t been working in my current environment or industry for even 10 years as of yet. If you count my few summers at Lowe’s while in college, that three-month period that I worked at Pita Pit, or the two and a half years that I worked at the Finish Line, which would equate to approximately four years from ages 18-23, that would put me at around 11 years total. I even did some remote freelance editing for a company in Chicago. However, one of the things that pervades throughout each of those companies, environments, and personnel groups is the fact that at the end of the day, without culture, there is no company.
As someone who has worked in the SEO industry for years and often heard that “Content is King,” I wanted to play off of that and provide a more comprehensive phrase around working in general, no matter the Industry. Culture is king.
If you start a company today and hire one other person, you are now creating a culture. If you have been in business for 150 years, you have a culture that has grown and changed and shifted over time (I hope). So really, it doesn’t matter the age, the size, or revenue. Your company has a culture, and what does it say about you?
I have made it my personal and professional goal to create a culture that will resonate and influence others who see our company, Site Strategics, from the outside. The culture that we have worked on over time, for me, has put one thing at the forefront: Life.
I am a person who works so I can live my life and impact others accordingly. I try to place that emphasis on our company as a whole, to improve the lives of all of our employees outside of the workplace, with the motivation that a happy life outside of work delivers an enjoyable and productive life inside of work.
Now, I am not talking necessarily about how we work, what we work on, or when we work on it. I am talking about why we work. I believe that the answer to that question for our company is twofold:
- We work so we can deliver success to our clients which, at the end of the day, is delivering happiness
- We work so we can make our lives and the lives of our coworkers just a little bit better
The first point is obvious. If you don’t work to deliver success and happiness to your clients, you probably won’t have clients for too much longer, right? The second point is a little bit different than many of the other experiences that I know about and have seen in action.
If you are able to create an environment at your workplace that encourages personal health, wellness, collaboration, cooperation, and a general feeling that you care about your employees after they leave every day, things change. You begin to get employees that actually care about the people they work with, and therefore the company that they work for.
Employees stop working for themselves so that they can leave at the end of the day and go along with their lives. Instead, they start working for those around them, so they can see their coworkers growth, the company’s growth, and in turn, the clients’ growth. Doesn’t that sound like somewhere you want to work?
I will follow up with more on the hows and the whats of what it is that we do to create this culture, but wanted to get a good synopsis of the overall feeling that we are continually trying to create here at Site Strategics! Stay tuned for our next blog: Working Remotely, Or Remotely Working?
