Guide the culture
When hiring people, Patel doesn’t necessarily need someone to fit in with the culture if he or she will be working in a more technical department, because the new hire won’t be interacting with large sections of employees or customers.
“You are much more open to personalities being slightly different,” he says. “When you get into the customer service area, those kinds of things, it pretty much is a team effort, so you have to be a member of the team,” he says.
At Homeowner’s Choice, Patel allows employees to form the culture.
“You are not imposing a culture; you are guiding a culture,” he says. “That’s the nature of it. It’s interesting to watch in terms of how that culture has been developing in the last year or so.”
When the company had only a handful of people, employees would celebrate each person’s birthday. As the company began to grow, there was a birthday cake every week.
Eventually, one of the company’s faster-growing departments decided to have a birthday day every month to celebrate the birthdays for that particular month.
If you see something like this happening in your
co
mpany, don’t let the opportunity to join in pass you by.
Part of leading a culture is finding good ideas and contributing to them.
“Basically, when the good things have been done, you try to encourage it,” he says.
“In reality, the good stuff, like the cake thing, when we found out about it, (we said), ‘Why don’t we just pay for the cake?’ We don’t have (employees) looking for dollars.”
On the other hand, if you see departments not communicating, you can take a more hands-on role in creating a collaborative environment.
In the early days, the company had offices in St. Petersburg and St. Lucie, and unless you traveled back and forth between the two, the employees in one office had no idea who was working in the other office.
To change that, Patel had some people come over from the St. Petersburg office and work in the St. Lucie office and vice versa.
“Now, when you have an issue, you are much more likely to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this thing, can you help me with it?’ as opposed to a name on a telephone list.”
Patel also wants to make sure employees feel comfortable calling him or speaking with him in person if they need him.
Instead of just preaching an open-door policy, Patel takes it one step further and has an open office plan. He has a cubicle the same size as everyone else’s and he spends time in there during the workday. This type of action allows Patel to get away from executive-level distractions and focus on the daily operations. It also makes you available to employees who might be intimidated when it comes to knocking on the boss’s door.
“You are now then immersed in what’s (happening) on a day-to-day basis because, in my office, it’s phone calls and meetings and those kinds of things,” he says. “Those are necessary things that need to get done. But the real heart of the business is out in the open plan area.”
If something is going on or somebody has an issue, you can hear about it and do something about it.
“But, that sounds like eavesdropping,” he says. “That isn’t the intent or the idea. If you are there doing some work and then you have a question, you just walk up to the person and ask a question. If I am asking them the question, then they come and ask me, and we get a comfort level with asking questions and talking to each other.”
This also eliminates an employee having to make that long walk to the boss’s office if something went wrong.
“If I am in my office and they have something to say, they’ve got to get up and walk down the hallway,” he says. “Especially if it’s something they think I might not appreciate hearing, it suddenly becomes a long walk. I just say that from having walked in those shoes. It’s all of maybe 30 yards, but it’s a long walk.”
Taking these actions and forming a positive culture can go a long way when things get tough in the business world.
“Once every so often … we get thrown a curveball,” he says. “By having the right corporate culture, you can get everybody in a room and say, ‘This is how this has changed, and we need to do the following.’ And everybody says, ‘OK, this is what I can do to help’ and so on. Lo and behold, we get things done.”
How to reach: Homeowners Choice Inc., (888) 210-5235 or www.hcpci.com
