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By Emily Moore
October 22, 2018

A s anyone at a quickly-growing company can tell you, it’s

not easy to maintain culture as a company matures. With
an ever-increasing number of new employees to onboard and
train and evolving business priorities, company culture can
sometimes get lost in the shuf e.

But while growing companies have many urgent needs, culture

should still be made a priority — preserving what makes a
company great from the beginning is much easier than trying to
regain it at a later point. And after all, company culture does
have intrinsic business value. Companies with strong cultures
tend to attract talent more easily, retain existing employees and
even nancially outperform the competition.

With this in mind, the talent management team at technology

lifecycle management company vCom decided to create a
program that would allow vCom to continue cultivating and
strengthening their culture, even as the company expanded at a
rapid clip.
“In the fourth quarter of last year, vCom added 13 new hires
bringing the company to nearly 100 employees. Considering
the in ux of new hires to the org, I felt compelled to develop a
culture-based onboarding program,” explained Cassandra Allen,
Talent Management Specialist at vCom. “It was my hope that
the program would provide new hires with the history of vCom
along with exposure to many elements of our culture” — which
Allen describes as “challenging, exible and fun” — “allowing
them to carry the culture forward as our teams continue to
grow.”

[Related: The Onboarding Checklist That Puts Culture First]

After gaining executive buy-in, Allen and her team began

designing the curriculum for the program, which they dubbed
the Ambassador Class, with the idea that attendees would be
able to serve as cultural ambassadors.

“We held our rst Ambassador Class course in June 2018 —

History of vCom. We offered it as a webinar for our remote
employees and an in-person session for those that are in-of ce.
The rst session included an overview of how vCom came to be
and a presentation of key facts over the years. To cap off the
session, we played a fun (and competitive) game of vCom
Jeopardy,” Allen shared.

The second Ambassador Class, which followed a few months

later, covered vCom’s internal peer-to-peer awards program,
which “creates opportunities for employees in all roles to be
recognized for embodying key values and behaviors, like
teamwork, impact, customer champion and more. This was an
interactive, discussion-based session where attendees shared
stories of spotting award-worthy behaviors,” Allen said.

Upcoming courses will focus on topics like vCom’s

philanthropic efforts, the ideal team player, how to
communicate with others based on their Myers–Briggs Type
Indicator assessments, career growth at vCom and more.

Although the program is still in its early days, the reaction from
employees has been overwhelmingly positive so far.

“Attendees from our rst Ambassador Class enjoyed it so much

that word spread quickly. We’ve more than doubled our
enrollments in the class and we’re now offering repeat sessions
of both courses we’ve already launched,” Allen said.

[Related: The 9 Pillars of Employee Engagement]

Allen offered a few words of advice for those who may be

interested in implementing a similar program at their company:

Consider the elements of your company culture that you

want to foster, reinforce or develop

Create courses and content that are interactive, engaging

and fun
 Provide opportunities for your teams to connect with
each other and the culture of your organization

Encourage ongoing expression of the culture through

recognition programs or other types of storytelling

“Employees are excited to engage with our culture through

these courses,” Allen shared. “While we’re still on the early side
of seeing the bene ts from the overall Ambassador Class
program, we anticipate the impact to ripple positively through
the org.”

Learn More: 
2018 Employee Engagement Checklist &
Calendar

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