The Secret Behind The Companion Group’s Family Vibe – and How It Fuels Our Progress
2017 TCG Company BBQ
Cultivating a great work environment is the goal of many employers. Yet, creating a company that cares deeply about its employee’s happiness as well as its own progress is a hard task. I’ll admit there is a fine line to walk between being too friendly in the workplace and too business focused. On one hand, your employees could see the space as too friendly and slack off. On the other, the work environment becomes a prison where individual happiness does not seem a priority. Here at The Companion Group, we have found an answer to the secret of workplace balance and it lies in our cultivation of the family vibe. The family vibe is our way keeping the workspace an employee respected environment while simultaneously creating a collective desire to succeed. Here are a couple of secrets to our family vibe formula:
Secret 1: Your passions are our passions – the same way your success is.
Amazing Halloween costumes from our 2017 Halloween party
We are a win together lose together team. We use weekly updates of news and events that go on in our co-worker’s lives to inform us about who they are outside of the office. This allows us to see our coworkers as real people, not just “Tom in sales”. At TCG we like to start our meetings by asking what interesting things you have done this week. If you have awesome plans for the weekend or saw a concert last night, we want to know. This respect for passions cultivates a workspace where everyone sees each other as an individual. When it comes to crunch time, this brings the team together. Knowing each other on a friendlier plane breaks down the workplace hierarchy and allows us to relate on a deeper level than just sales numbers and deadlines. A company with employees that care about each other ends up becoming a family that works hard together.
Secret 2: Our employees share our company’s values
This means hiring an entire team of individuals who already carry our company ideals. Not an easy task but an essential one. By hiring like-minded individuals that demonstrate values that are in line with our company, we create a family that shares the same spirit. Here at TCG, we value problem-solving, empowerment and passion above all else. By finding candidates that share these values we bring a common sense of purpose to work. This is crucial to progress as it allows the culture of the office to remain passionate about the common goals of the company.
Secret 3: Meet your boss – A friend first approach to leadership
Our annual pool tournament is a much anticipated good time
In some families, parents that have a best friend relationship with their kids end up being closer to their children than the purely strict parent. The same is true for the boss-employee relationship here at TCG. Along with holding similar values – our leaders are not the over dominating boss you might see yelling at their workers. Instead, they reflect a healthy parental relationship, with open lines of conversation and clear respect flowing in both directions. Here at TCG, doors are always open, opinions are always heard and no one is looked down upon because of their position. This dynamic cultivates the sharing of ideas, allows employees to ask for help, and most of all builds a shared trust.
Secret 4: Your REAL family matters just as much
We love visits from our staff’s adorable kiddos!
TCG is a family, which means your real family is an extended member of our company. When a child needs to be picked up or a kid gets sent to the office there are no questions asked. You clock out and take care of what is important. This method of respect ends up going both ways. Our employees see the company as a family and when there is an emergency here our employees are at the rescue.
Overall the family vibe at TCG comes from a shared respect for each other. We bond together over lunch and at company parties just like other companies, but because of the extra effort we put into caring about our co-worker’s lives on the day to day, these bonds become much deeper. In the end, these small secrets that make our workdays a little friendlier add up to huge amounts of trust and caring. When you create a company built on these family vibe secrets – you end up with a business like TCG that is 43% comprised of employees that have worked together as a family for over 10 years and counting.
