4 Ways to Keep a Small Company Culture as Your Business Grows

Most startups are looking to grow. But once success hits, how can you scale your company without shedding the shared values and culture that helped make you successful in the first place?

FreshBooks, a cloud accounting company based in Toronto, started in 2003 as a handful of people in a small office. Today, more than 5 million people have used FreshBooks to manage their books and we now have more than 90 employees.

As we've moved beyond our initial startup stages, here are four ways that we strive to keep our small business values as we continue to grow:

1. Keep a small-business owner's perspective. When we were a really small business, it was easy to empathize with the pains felt by our small business customers -- be it paperwork keeping them from the work they love, to struggling to grow their own businesses. As we grow, it's critical that we continue to see things from the small business owner's perspective.

Empathy is important in more than just customer support. From marketers to product design and quality assurance, we want our employees to all be able to step inside the small business owner's shoes and then focus on how to make their lives easier.

2. Build a foundation of shared beliefs. Every business has its own culture, whether you define one or not. It doesn't mean that all of your employees must think exactly the same way as management does. But by creating a set of shared beliefs, everyone has a framework for how to set priorities, make decisions, treat customers, and treat each other.

To keep your company's core beliefs fresh in everyone's mind, consider writing them down somewhere highly visable. For example, online retailer, Zappos, has the 10 core values of the company written on every staff member's nametag. Whether you do this or not, the actions of your company's leaders will always speak louder than any words in the corporate manual.

3. Create open channels of communication. When your company is small everyone wears multiple hats and experiences the business from multiple dimensions. As a company grows, communication can become a labyrinth and employees get pigeonholed into one or two roles.

At FreshBooks, we've taken a unique approach to keep the small company dynamic. Everyone (executive management included) rotates through customer support. A customer might get the CEO one day or a developer the next day. We take this unorthodox approach because we want everyone at the company to stay close to the customers.

4. Develop company culture outside business hours. If a company expects employees to love its customers, the company must love its employees. We include a lot activities outside of the office -- in fact, fun is one of our values. For example, one weekend every year, the entire company and their families take a group vacation.  

How to Build an Ethical Business Culture

Are business ethics in danger? A 2011 report from the Ethics Resource Center found that "ethics cultures are eroding and employees' perceptions of their leaders' ethics are slipping." Employees are experiencing increased retaliation against whistle-blowers as well as more pressure to break rules.

That doesn't surprise Michael Josephson, president and founder of the Josephson Institute, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that delivers services and materials to increase ethical awareness, commitment and behavior. When the stakes are higher, such as they are in today's tough business climate, people may feel more pressure to act unethically to produce results, whether it's lying to customers, bad-mouthing competitors, or undermining co-workers.

That kind of behavior can cause significant problems with morale and could even lead to legal issues. Josephson says that it's critical for business leaders to take a stand when it comes to ethics and offers these three tips to do so.

1. Make your expectations clear. Teach employees what you mean by ethical behavior -- there's no simpler way to do so than to write down your expectations. Include your expectations when it comes to ethical decision-making in your employee handbook or in other documentation that employees receive during their first days on the job.

In addition to mapping out the behavior you expect, give employees some guidelines to help them when it comes to making ethical decisions, including when they should turn to their managers for guidance and how to report unethical behavior they see around them.

2. Enforce your policies. When ethical breaches happen, there should be consequences, says Josephson. If your top performer is cheating on an expense report or lying to customers, you're not just tolerating the behavior -- you're teaching your other employees to be unethical, as well, he says.

The behavior will likely multiply when others see what you'll overlook. Josephson also cautions that if your top performer is lying or mistreating others, it's likely only a matter of time before he or she does the same to you.

3. Be your own change agent. The best-laid ethics policies won't matter if you don't walk your talk, says Josephson. Employees watch you for cues about how they're expected to act. When you cut ethical corners, they notice and are likely to think the behavior is okay.

"Instilling ethics into your organization is probably going to cost more than you want to pay," says Josephson. It's tough to be a model citizen and rein in behavior that, while helping your business earn, isn't on the up-and-up. In the long run, however, the damage that ethical lapses can cause may cost you far more than letting go of an unethical employee or some bad business habits, he says.