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OPINION
A cohesive culture
Creating an engaging culture across multiple offices is a challenge that requires constant diligence.
I t’s challenging to build a cohesive and engaging culture, especially if your firm has multiple offices, multiple disciplines, field staff, or hybrid/work-from-home staff. In the case of BL Companies, we have all of the above. As an employee-owned firm, culture and engagement have always been a top priority, and we pride ourselves on the great culture we’ve built. That being said, culture and engagement are consistent challenges that require constant diligence.
Julia DeFrances
So how do you take so many disparate groups and create an engaging culture that works for everyone? And how do you maintain a great culture once you’ve built one? After more than a decade of employee- ownership, BL has some lessons learned that can help any firm build and maintain an engaging culture. 1. Start by understanding what a good and engaging culture actually means. It isn’t just about offering pizza parties and fun – it’s about respect, support, and connection. Fun is a bonus, not a cornerstone of good culture. No one stays at a firm because they have a ping pong table in the break room, just like no one leaves a firm because they don’t. People stay at firms where
they are valued, listened to, and supported. They leave firms that undervalue or under compensate them, refuse to address problems or change, and leave employees to fend for themselves. 2. While good culture is built on things like respect and support, fun events can still be a way to cultivate a better culture, as long as the fun is genuinely impactful. There should be a tangible benefit employees get by participating, as well as a tangible benefit the firm gets by hosting. At BL, our fun events usually come with some sort of prize for participants, so there’s a direct
See JULIA DEFRANCES , page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEMBER 5, 2022, ISSUE 1467
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