Image credit:  xymonau CC license

The markets are in turmoil, the economy sucks, so what kind of corporate culture makes your small business, company or startup an attractive place to work?

Short answer: a culture of fiscal intelligence.

Long answer: a culture that spends its money wisely, eliminating low ROI frills and cuts without selling the company’s future down the drain.

This doesn’t mean substituting crappy coffee for the good stuff and eliminating free soda.

It does mean listing all the frills—executive and worker alike—and polling your people to find which are really paying off and which can be scrapped—not a decision made by management, but one that your people hash out and agree to before it’s a done deal.

Sometimes good coffee and soda have a higher ROI morale-wise than you would think.

All this should be doubly true for startups, but it often isn’t. Yes, your money is banked and if you’re VC funded, as opposed to angel or bootstrapping, chances are you’re pretty flush. But having it doesn’t mean you need to spend it.

If any company thinks that cushy perks are attractive in this economy think again. Think just how naïve/ignorant/arrogant a candidate must be to expect a large sign-on bonus or fancy perks given current economic conditions. Not to mention how financially stupid any company still offering them appears to a candidate.

The smartest companies build fiscally intelligent corporate cultures from the beginning, so that when they have to tighten down no one is surprised.

Throwing money around is always stupid, whether in business or personally.

I’ve heard from companies of all sizes and managers at all levels why this one candidate was worth X more than anyone else walking and how not getting her could deal a crippling, or even lethal, blow to the company.

If you ever feel that way, remember two inimitable truths.

• If that not having that one specific person could bring down the company it’s unlikely to succeed anyway.

• The candidate who joins you for money will always leave for more money.

Remember, the goal is a lean, mean, innovative, motivated machine—not a lean, mean, depressed one.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 am and is filed under Business info, Compensation, Culture, Hiring, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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