RF-SMART: Did you see that?
By Michael Morales, CEO
Over the course of RF-SMART’S history, we have been intentional to define and encourage our culture in specific ways, and the results have been significant: extremely high team member retention (94% last year), consistent revenue and profit growth (Inc. 5000), and award-winning engagement (Best Places to Work). So…how did we shape our culture?
Our technology company was founded in 1982, and for the first 30 years, we developed our culture organically. Our founder, Jorge Morales, set out to create an organization that focused on customers while caring for employees. Jorge was known for going to the hospital to support a colleague and people felt cared for at RF-SMART. Our team members have always described RF-SMART as feeling like a family. However, we were not clear about what it meant to be part of the family. We had no written mission or guidance regarding the behavior that we wanted.
As Jorge’s son came in to lead the business, we decided to intentionally define our culture. Our Executive Team started by asking themselves the hard questions: Why do we exist as a company? How do we want our team members to treat each other? What are our values?
The time we spent ruminating over our answers led us to a clear, concise mission statement. We all know that some mission statements cause people to roll their eyes, fall asleep…or both. That’s why we decided to come up with a one sentence that was impactful, accessible, and memorable. That sentence is:
We exist to transform our customers and change lives.
While mission statements are often ineffective, our mission statement truly means something to us. When we talk about changing lives, we can give you examples of people whose lives have been changed because they love their jobs and even their families feel the impact. We can tell you stories of people whose lives have been changed through our health and wellness, financial, and mental wellness programs. We can even tell you stories of people who have felt so loved and supported at RF-SMART that they would never leave this company.
Our CEO Michael meets with every new hire on their first day of work for one hour to talk about our company’s mission and he shares those stories of life change. Many of our leaders start meetings by reminding their team members why we exist….I’m confident that if you asked any one of our 174 team members, they could recite our mission statement verbatim and give you an example of how we live it.
But that’s just where the culture starts at RF-SMART. Added to the mission statement is a clear set of values that define the behavior that is expected of every team member. Each company value has an associated question intended to help our team members personalize the value and determine if they are truly living it:
Crazy for our customers
How are you behaving that delights and surprises our customers?
Easy to do business with
Do others want to work with you?
We have your back
How are you helping others when they need it most?
We fire bullets before cannonballs
What experiments are you running?
Ever-expanding impact
How are you growing and influencing others?
While these values are vital to the behaviors we want to see on a daily basis, they are also critical to our recruiting process. Our candidates are attracted to RF-SMART because of our values. Also, most companies talk about whether candidates are a “fit.” We are able to be specific when evaluating candidates: Does she have examples of being crazy for a Customer? Do you think he would be easy to do business with? And so on.
As VP of People, I meet with every new hire for an hour to talk about these values, provide examples of what they look like at RF-SMART, and clearly confirm the expectation to every team member to live these values.
One of our favorite ways to celebrate and encourage our cultural behavior is our Did You See That? award. This is an award that peers give to each other when they catch someone specifically living out our mission and/or values. After an easy email nomination process, the team member who witnessed the great behavior is given a $25 gift card, which they present to their peer, along with a handshake (or high five!) and a thank you. A Polaroid picture is taken of the two team members and posted on a wall so everyone can see it, and the recognition is emailed out to the entire company.
While our strong culture is certainly more than a mission statement and values, they are the foundation. With this strong foundation, additional efforts to maintain and improve our culture are significantly easier. We love transforming customers and changing lives, and we feel proud that our employees feel the same.