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How Company Culture Impacts Tenure & Productivity
By David Tovissi
Vice President and General Manager
HARMAN Luxury Audio Group
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of celebrating with my team an important service milestone of one of our valued employees. This month marked the 40th anniversary of Tom Melville, Sr. Program Manager, working at HARMAN. Tom often reminds us that his career with HARMAN started by applying for a summer job while he was attending college at California State University’s Northridge campus. Tom said he and his girlfriend at the time, both responded to a job posting for a summer internship position. Oddly enough, his girlfriend got the job. However, Tom’s interview and passion was not forgotten and shortly after his girlfriend accepted the job, Tom received the most important call of his life at that time. HARMAN had another summer job and offered it to him.
How did a summer job turn into a rewarding 40 year career? While if you ask Tom, he will tell you it was the culture of the company and the comradery of the employees that motivated him to change his college major to industrial engineering and convince his manager to retain him after the summer.
A strong and positive company culture is vital for attracting and retaining top talent. At HARMAN, our culture provides a sense of belonging, purpose, and engagement amongst our employees, making them more likely to stay with the company long-term. At Tom’s 40th Anniversary lunch, I looked around the table and reflected on how fortunate HARMAN has been in retaining our talent. Whichever direction I looked; I saw a HARMAN team member with tenure over 30 years.
Research suggests that companies with positive cultures are better positioned to not only retain their employees, but also attract high-quality candidates and reduce the costs associated with employee turnover.
This morning when I was sharing some pictures of Tom’s celebration lunch with my wife, she told me that I was fortunate to work for a company where employees remain loyal and inspired to deliver more successes for HARMAN. She shared how hard it has been recently for her employer to hire health professionals because there are so many jobs available for new graduates to choose from and why great candidates are choosing where to apply for work. Her insights are also shared by researchers who have been studying the impact of culture and attracting top talent.
According to a recent blog from the Talent Management Institute (TMI), https://www.tmi.org/blogs/building-a-vibrant-work-culture-to-attract-and-retain-top-talent, a positive work culture establishes an organization as an employer of choice and helps drive employee engagement and performance.
Another reminder of how a company’s culture can influence positive outcomes occurred last week when we invited the senior leadership and the key influencers of one of the top high-end audio dealers in the U.S. to visit our Northridge campus and meet our team and listen to our JBL Summit Loudspeakers and the new Mark Levinson 600 Series products. This dealer was not a current customer of HARMAN so there was plenty of skepticism amongst them prior to the visit.
After spending most of the day touring our facilities, speaking with our passionate and very tenured employees and listening to our new products, we shared a very casual dinner with them and talked about what they experienced during their time with us. While they shared their concern for losing their negotiating power, the owner of the business and his team could not stop talking about how impressed they were with our team members and their pursuit of excellence in everything they do.
This week I had a follow-up call with the owner of the company that visited with us, and he said that his team was blown away by our new products but was even more impacted by the team and the facilities that they take pride in working at.
Creating a work culture where top talent can flourish isn’t that hard to accomplish if your company has the commitment to listen and respond to your employees. According to the TMI, building a company culture is an ongoing, systemic process requiring efforts across the business.
Here are some of the actions according to TMI that companies with positive work cultures frequently do to attract and retain top talent and how HARMAN has actively engaged in pursuing.
Define and Communicate Core Values
Core values articulate an organization's guiding principles and priorities. Communicate values clearly to all employees. Live the values through actions to foster trust in leadership's commitment. At HARMAN, our Goals and Core Values are on display throughout the campus.
Foster Transparency and Trust
Be frank about the challenges and realities employees face. Conduct transparent, two-way communication on issues that arise. Build trust through clarity, truth and accountability for promises made. At HARMAN, we do not understate or hide from the challenges that we face. We embrace the challenge and communicate with our employees during quarterly All-Hands meetings with senior leadership.
Promote Continuous Learning
Offer regular training programs, funding for external courses, and opportunities to take on stretch projects. Encourage self-driven learning and certifications. Cultivate a culture of knowledge-sharing across teams. There are so many avenues for HARMAN team members to pursue to learn and better themselves. We even encourage our team to schedule their personal development days in their Outlook calendar, so they don’t forget how important continuous career development is.
Empower Employee Voice
Actively solicit employee feedback through pulse surveys, focus groups and town-hall meetings with leadership. Enable two-way engagement to get diverse perspectives. Address concerns raised and communicated changes made. Once a year, HARMAN contracts a 3rd party survey company to conduct anonymous surveys with our team members to receive feedback on how our employees feel about the direction of the company and how engaged they are in the job.
Recognize and Appreciate Contributions
Establish both formal and informal programs to acknowledge achievements and efforts, from project milestones to acts of exemplary teamwork. Recognize varied accomplishments through rewards, spot bonuses, public commendations, recognition walls or newsletters to maintain motivation. In a previous article, I spoke about the HARMAN Be Brilliant Program that allows employees to recognize the accomplishments of their peers. Sometimes a simple Thank You can keep a team engaged with the goals of the company.
Foster Well-Being and Work-Life Flexibility
Institute employee wellness programs and workshops for stress management and mind-body balance. Promote flexible work arrangements, paid time-off, and family support policies to help employees integrate professional responsibilities with personal needs and priorities. HARMAN recognizes that our employees are experiencing internal and external pressures in their lives, and we have encouraged our team to seek a healthy work/life balance. This improves engagement and reduces preventable turnover.
