I have had the opportunity throughout my career to sit on both sides of the table, in Operations and in Team Member Services (HR).
And if there is one thing that experience has taught me, it’s this:
Culture is not an HR initiative. Culture is a business strategy.
For a long time, culture has somehow landed in the HR bucket. Engagement surveys? Recognition? Leadership development? Retention? Employee experience? Definitely HR.
And yes, Team Member Services absolutely plays an important role in all of those things.
But we can’t “HR” our way into a great culture.
We can build the programs. We can provide the tools. We can develop leaders, measure engagement, create recognition programs, look at turnover data, build career paths and help identify where the organization has opportunities to improve.
But ultimately, culture happens in the business.
Every. Single. Day.
Culture Is Built in the Small Moments
Culture is not created by what is written on the wall or even by what is written in the employee handbook.
It’s created in the moments that happen when no one is talking about culture.
It’s how a leader responds when someone makes a mistake.
It’s whether a team member who consistently goes above and beyond is recognized or eventually starts wondering why they bother.
It’s whether poor performance is addressed or the rest of the team is expected to pick up the slack.
It’s whether employees understand why a decision was made, even when they may not agree with it.
It’s whether people feel comfortable raising their hand and saying, “I think there might be a better way.”
And it’s whether leaders do what they say they are going to do.
Those moments may seem small individually, but collectively, they become your culture.
What Culture Looks Like in the Numbers
I have seen what happens when culture changes.
One of the best examples in my own career came when I took over the leadership of a call center.
At the time, the attendance rate was 56%.
Think about what that means operationally.
Nearly half of the workforce you were expecting to show up wasn’t there.
You can build schedules. You can forecast call volume. You can establish service-level goals. You can track every KPI imaginable.
But none of that matters very much if your people aren’t showing up.
It would have been easy to look at that as simply an attendance problem.
But I did not.
We had a culture problem.
So, the focus became changing the environment.
We worked on expectations and accountability, but we also worked on communication, recognition, trust and making sure people understood that their contribution mattered and was appreciated.
We celebrated wins. We communicated more. We listened. We held people accountable. And, just as importantly, we made sure the people who were showing up and doing the right things knew they were valued. Most importantly, we followed the Platinum Rule: treat others as THEY want to be treated.
The shift happened faster than I expected. The team needed clearer expectations, stronger communication, accountability and, perhaps most importantly, to know their contributions were seen and valued.
And eventually, that 56% attendance rate grew to 92%.
That’s a culture number.
But it’s also an operations number.
Because when attendance improved, suddenly we had more people available to answer calls. The team wasn’t constantly trying to compensate for who didn’t show up. Leaders could spend more time leading and less time putting out fires.
And with better attendance and a stronger culture, the business results followed.
That experience has stayed with me throughout my career because it reinforced something I still believe today:
When you change the employee experience, you can change the business outcome.
The “People Stuff” Is the Business
I get it. I understand the pressure.
There are budgets to hit, revenue goals to achieve, customers to take care of, expenses to manage, schedules to fill and problems that need to be solved, usually yesterday.
It can be easy in that environment to think of the “people stuff” as something separate from the business.
But it is not.
Because who is actually delivering your business strategy?
Your people.
Who creates the customer experience?
Your people.
Who finds the efficiencies, solves the problems and keeps the operation moving?
Your people.
When we talk about culture, engagement, development and retention, we are not talking about something separate from operational performance. We are talking about what drives it.
In hospitality especially, our team members are the guest experience. Culture does not stay behind the scenes. It ultimately shows up in how our guests experience the business.
That connection became even clearer to me when I moved from Operations into Team Member Services.
From the Operations seat, you experience the impact of culture.
From the Team Member Services seat, you can see the patterns behind it.
You see where turnover is happening. Where recruiting is difficult. Where engagement is strong. Where teams consistently perform well. Where people are growing and being promoted, and where they are not.
And very often, when you start digging into the data, there is a leadership and culture story underneath it.
Your Leader Is Often Your Experience of the Company
Companies spend a lot of time defining their values, and they should.
But an employee doesn’t experience your company through a PowerPoint presentation or a poster in the breakroom.
They experience it through their leader.
For most employees, their direct leader is the company.
That person determines whether they feel supported, challenged, recognized, communicated with and valued.
It’s one of the reasons I believe so strongly in leadership development.
We sometimes take someone who is fantastic at their job, promote them into leadership, hand them a team and expect them to automatically know how to lead people.
Then we’re surprised when they struggle.
Leading people is a skill.
Coaching, giving feedback, managing conflict, having difficult conversations and building trust are skills, too.
If culture matters to the business, then developing people who can lead that culture has to matter too.
Culture Eventually Shows Up in the Numbers
This is where my Operations and Team Member Services worlds really come together.
Culture can sometimes be viewed as the “soft” side of business.
I do not see it that way at all.
I have watched culture help move an attendance rate from 56% to 92%, taking a low-performing center to a top-performing center. That is pretty hard to call “soft.”
When people trust their leaders, understand expectations, see opportunities to grow and believe their contribution matters, they show up differently.
Sometimes, quite literally, they show up.
So, Who Owns Culture?
Everyone.
Team Member Services has an important role. We should provide the framework, tools, training, data and support that help leaders build great teams.
But EVERYONE owns culture.
Every leader who has the ability to influence another person’s experience at work owns a piece of the culture.
That’s why I believe culture needs to be part of the same conversations where we discuss revenue, expenses, growth, customer experience and operational performance.
Not a separate “HR topic.”
Not something we dust off once a year when the engagement survey comes out.
And not something we suddenly become concerned about when turnover starts climbing.
Culture should be part of how we run the business.
Because after sitting on both sides of the table, that’s ultimately what I’ve learned:
HR can help build the road.
Leaders determine how we travel it.
Culture isn’t a program we launch or an initiative we complete. It’s how we choose to run the business, every single day.
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