Michael Kerr says hiring accounts for roughly 90% of building a great workplace culture. He emphasizes immersing new hires in company values before they start, then providing deep experiential training rather than surface-level slide decks. Continuous reinforcement keeps both new and existing employees living those values daily.
The importance of getting your hiring right is 90% of the battle. You have to. You can't— and I know tight labor markets, right? That it's easy to just hold up the old mirror and do the fog test or see if the person has a pulse and say, you're hired. You cannot get away with that. If you want to build a great workplace, you need to invest relentlessly in your hiring, in your onboarding, in selling your culture before they've even started to work with you so they understand what your cultural Norms are, what your values are, and relentlessly hire for attitude and for people who are going to grow your culture. And then you need to train those people on your culture and your existing people. You need to offer training on your values and not a slide on a PowerPoint presentation that talks about culture and your values. You need to train in an in-depth way about what your culture is all about. And Then you've got to relentlessly keep it alive.
