Building a Culture

I would say one of the best parts about my internship is the culture. Since we are a startup company, and there are only a couple of people involved in the business, the culture is very relaxed and casual. It isn’t relaxed in the sense that we are not busy, because we are definitely busy. We are constantly experiencing issues but the way we approach them is definitely different than a large corporation would. I have actually been able to spend time joking around with my boss. He is very understanding of time constraints I might have and is rather easygoing in general.

Even though my boss and I are close, we communicate mostly through email and occasionally text. Personally I think that more could be done over text, but using email keeps us professional. last week I designed an email to try and get people to respond to a survey about our catering business. I tried to use language that expressed what I thought the company culture should be. This included some light jokes and a language geared toward younger people. My boss was impressed and improved of the email, so I guess we are on about the same page when it comes to what kind of personality we want to project.

What I am really curious about is the vision my boss has for company culture in the future. As we continue grow, relationships continue to shift and strengthen or even weaken. I know that keeping a fun and energetic culture becomes more difficult as companies grow, because as employees are hired, rules must become stricter so that we can remain productive. I hope that we can keep a culture that is similar to the one we have now because the culture is part of what motivates me to get excited about going to work.