Measure your progress
Swift Energy performs an annual cultural survey aimed at measuring how
effectively employees are internalizing
and passing along the company culture.
Over time, trends develop, and Vincent
is able to see both areas of success and
areas in which improvement is needed
with regard to bringing employees on
board with the vision, mission and core
values.
“The survey is designed to get feedback from our employees on what kind
of an organization we are,” he says.
“Over time, you see trends develop. One
of the things I’ve always been particularly
proud of is that one of the things that
gets rated at or near the top every year is
the values of the company. The other
thing that gets rated at or near the top is
safety. So two of the things we talk
about, that we believe are important,
you are seeing evidenced in feedback
from employees.”
But feedback can’t stop with an annual
survey, no matter how enlightening it is.
Vincent also emphasizes taking the pulse
of the culture through day-to-day interaction with employees.
“Day to day, there is not a formal
process, and I don’t think you want a formal process,” he says. “The process is
more informal in the sense that we rely
on each other to hold each other
accountable for our values.”
Setting the standard for accountability
starts with senior management. Vincent
says you and your direct reports need to
show the rest of the company that you
are willing to work as a team to promote
the values of the company.
“We expect people to perform as a
team every day,” he says. “We have to
constantly make that an important issue
for us — something we practice at the
top. You can’t have divisiveness in the
highest ranks of the company without
expecting that divisiveness to be rampant throughout the organization. If your
senior-level leadership is working as a
team, if they’re transparent and open to
each other, if they’re not building silos or
fiefdoms, that is going to ripple through
the organization.”
