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In episode 77 of “The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast,” JoDee and Susan discuss how to create an engaging company culture and give your company a little personality. Realizing the power a JoyPowered® culture can have on productivity, engagement, and wellbeing was the onus behind creating The JoyPowered Podcast, but up until now, we haven’t done an episode all about making sure your own workplaces have a thriving JoyPowered® culture.

Culture begins revealing itself to you as soon as the doors to an office are opened. From the foyer to the corner office, the personality of a company permeates everything an employee – or a visitor – observes while in the building. “Culture starts at the top,” is a well-worn quip that everyone in the HR field has heard, but is there any truth to this? There’s often a disconnect between leaders, entry level employees, and everyone in-between, and culture is often perceived differently by everyone at a company. In the podcast, JoDee and Susan use Susan Heathfield’s article “How to Understand Your Company Culture” as a frame of reference to get us started on the basics of getting a grasp on a company’s identity.

To be engaged, employees must feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work every day. Sometimes there is a disconnect between an employee and an organization, but this doesn’t mean that the company culture is rotten. Sometimes there’s a bad fit between employer and employee, but unless there is some sort of discrimination, a bad fit isn’t necessarily a signal that a company’s culture needs a massive overhaul. For example, Zappos has a code of 10 values that all employees are expected to uphold, but if those core values don’t mesh with someone, both employee and employer would be better off going their separate ways – and that’s ok!

Carrie Frash joins The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast to pass on her culture building knowledge. Carrie, a veteran of the advertising world and the former Global Director of Culture at Verizon Media, now heads up the consulting team at The Culture Tribe. Carrie and The Culture Tribe focus every day on building up cultures within brands, global companies, start ups, and teams of any kind. Carrie walks us through how she shaped the culture of a 13,000 employee strong company utilizing virtual and augmented reality, along with more traditional techniques, before laying out the principles for an exciting new tool called The Shine Scale. Carrie and her team use The Shine Scale to boost company cultures and give events and offsite meetings an extra sparkle.

JoDee and Susan tackle a query about getting into HR from another career path in today’s listener question. There are academic paths into the human resources world, but Susan lays out the reasoning behind her opinion that an HR degree isn’t necessary. In the news, a new California bill regarding contractors potentially puts Uber, Taskrabbit, and similar apps in a precarious position, and could have widespread implications on several industries.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Purple Ink
• Susan Tinder White Consulting
• JoyPowered^®: Intentionally Creating an Inspired Workspace by JoDee Curtis
• The JoyPowered^® Family by JoDee Curtis and Denise McGonigal
• The JoyPowered^® Team by Erin Brothers, JoDee Curtis, Peggy Hogan, Denise McGonigal, Laura North, Susan Tinder White, and Liz Zirkelbach
• “How to Understand Your Current Culture”
• “10 Ways to Create an Employee Engagement Culture”
• “How Zappos Infuses Culture Using Core Values”
• Carrie’s email address
• The Culture Tribe
• The Shine Scale
• Stitcher Premium – use promo code JOYPOWERED for one month free

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