A Simple Way to Get a Handle on a Company's Culture

A fit with a company’s culture is of huge importance to an individual’s success. But the interview process is a bit like speed-dating, with only superficial impressions possible during such a compressed time frame, and everyone on their best behavior.

And, on perhaps the most important single measure for an individual – the value a company places on its people – reading corporate value statements doesn’t help much. I don’t believe there is any company out there that says “We view our people as a bunch of cogs in a wheel. Work harder and quit complaining.”

From my experience, the relevant insight on this front can be gleaned from one simple observation: how senior people at the company treat individuals who leave / are asked to leave, how they show them the door, and how they talk about them when they are gone.

Do they hire and fire people with great speed? Do they staff up and then staff down, or are they more thoughtful in how they deploy people? And how do they treat individuals they let go?

True story: I know of a senior executive whose company tracked him down to fire him while he was on vacation with his family, giving him less than an hour before he was to announce it to his team. That’s right: a senior executive. A guy who had been there for years. A guy who had had a string of perfectly good performance reports. A guy who had stuck with the company during the financial downturn. And a guy who was let go because they were eliminating his role, not because he stole things or was caught breaking company rules.

Does it sound like this company “values its people”? Here actions spoke louder than the corporate motto. Indeed, the other components of the Value Statement, along the lines of the oft-cited “putting customers at the center of all we do,” "inclusiveness" and “taking prudent risks” rang a bit less true to the employees of his department...

While this is an extreme case, in some companies, as soon as an employee leaves, he or she quickly goes from being a “valued partner” to the one who “never really cut it,” who “never really fit in,” whom the company is “better off without” and “the guy we were about to fire anyway” in the blink of an eye. (Rookie manager alert: this is really, really easy to fall into, the first time you lose an employee to a competitor. Don’t go there.)

Others – think McKinsey – employ an “up or out” culture, but help their departing executives find roles at other companies. Their former partners are “alumni,” not “the guys who failed.” Implicitly, perhaps, they recognized the positive reinforcing power of a strong network long before many others did. Thus they cultivate that “alumni network” by keeping in touch with its members and bringing them back together for events and education. This respect translates into significant business sent to McKinsey by its “alums” and immeasurable amounts of good will. While the financial returns on culture can be impossible to quantify, this is one area in which they are most certainly positive.

Sallie Krawcheck is the Business Leader of the professional woman’s network, 85 Broads. The network is 30,000+ women strong, with members from across industries and around the world.

Photo: Enri Endrien/Flickr