10 Startups With The Best Company Culture in 2022
What’s the one thing you are looking for when searching for a job?
That’s right. Company culture.
A Glassdoor’s Mission & Culture Survey in 2019, found that over 77 percent of people across four countries — US, UK, France, and Germany, would consider company culture as an important factor for applying for a job, while almost 80 percent would consider a company’s mission and purposes before applying.
Apart from making sure you are going to be paid well, you also want to be certain that you are going to be a good fit for a company and vice versa.
Everything that you are; including your personality, should be able to shine and help you give out your best performance, which means you will need to find a work environment and the right community of people that will allow you to do just that.
Interested to know more about company culture and which startups offer the best? This article goes over everything you need to know.
What is Company Culture?
Company culture or ‘organizational culture’ is the collection of behaviors, attitudes, and values that are shared between the members of an organization — employers and employees. What it does, is defining the way people within an organization communicate and work with each other.
While for most corporate environments, company culture is the same — following a hierarchical order, the startup culture is different. Instead of having a strict structure, a tech company or a startup allows more flexibility in the way of operations, both on the departmental and individual levels.
A startup culture offers a sense of autonomy, openness, and free-flowing creativity, and even though the hierarchy is in place, it is much more on the loose end since employees often try on different hats and take many roles to get things done.
What makes a great company culture?
A company culture unintentionally defines an organization, and it exists, whether you are aware of it or not. Any organization that wants to build a successful company culture, however, goes one step further as it strives and works on continually improving it.
The key characteristics of a great company culture are:
- A vision, mission and a purpose for doing things
- Common language, values and standards
- Great leadership roles through examples
- Powerful brand or cultural ambassadors
- Trust, respect and open communication
- Good manners and people treatment
What drives a strong company culture are the attitudes that help to create unity, foster teamwork and effective communication.
This means that company culture is more than recruiting the best candidates out there or simply following business etiquette. The biggest foundations of a ‘culture’ inside a startup is the passion and determination that comes from the management team which is often reflected upon to the rest of the team.
10 Startups With The Best Company Culture
After extensive research, these are the top ten startups that have made it to the list of having the best company culture in 2022. Let’s see what some of the well-known startups are doing and how they are carving out their own company culture.
#1 ProofHub
ProofHub’s impressive way of doing things has rightfully helped the company earn a place in ‘The Forbes List Of America’s Best Employers 2021’.
ProofHub is a company that puts its employees first. In order to make sure they are providing their employees with everything they need, they ask them some key questions that help them get to know them better. Questions like how can the company make work fun for them is a winning strategy to ensure that the company is offering its employees the best for their work performance, professional growth, and career success.
A company culture like ProofHub offers is built upon strong foundations that create an environment that fosters transparency, trust, empowerment, and empathy.
#2 Hootsuite
Hootsuite — the popular social media management platform that was founded in 2008, defines their culture as ‘a passionate egoless team having fun building something bigger than itself’.The strong company culture they have built over the years, is what has helped the company acquire new talent. While always making sure that they hire the right employees that share their values, they strive to help them become brand ambassadors themselves.
Read Hootsuite’s manifesto that cultivates the social revolution inside the company. Every new employee who joins the company, gets this document which lists all the core principles — the company’s mission, vision, values, the story of Hootsuite, employees’ experiences, and a peepsbook.
Best motto: ‘Blow Shit Up’ is Hootsuite’s motivational mantra which became a viral acronym for social media — #BSU.
#3 LinkedIn
LinkedIn — the most popular networking platform that knows its whereabouts on every company around the world and helps nurture professional connections, has its own unique place in this list for its superb company culture. Apart from having cool offices, LinkedIn cares deeply about the wellbeing of its employees.
LinkedIn’s culture is built upon specific points of direction like Transformation, Integrity, Collaboration, Humor and Results. It also stands by important values that aim to inspire its employees to do excellent work. Their values are focused around building better relationships, taking intelligent risks, creating a sense of belonging through diversity and inclusion, and encouraging every employee to act like an owner of #OneLinkedIn.
#4 Shopify
The Canadian startup that introduced the popular ecommerce platform we know today — Shopify, has rightfully earned its place here. Their expansion from a five-people team working at a coffee shop to a company of 7000+ employees, has been phenomenal. This success came from the dedication the team has shown to their product over the years and of course their strong company values.
What’s great about Shopify’s culture is that it focuses on employee empowerment. Using a reward system through their ‘Unicorn’ platform, the company allows employees to show appreciation to coworkers who go the extra mile.
This way, each employee can gather ‘unicorn’ points and recognition from their peers that can entitle them to earning a bonus at the end of each month. Cool, right?
#5 Google
While the nap bods, ping-pong tables, free food and pet-friendly offices are important perks to have, these aren’t necessarily the things that make up a great company culture. Yet, Google never ceases to amaze people with it’s free-flowing flexibility and sense of creativity it brings to the workplace.
Google’s ambitious attitude towards ‘work hard and play hard’ is evident throughout its grounds and philosophy and it’s what has allowed it to be the company with the best culture for so long. The popular company has strong beliefs on diversity and inclusion, and strives to only hire people that share the same values and believe in their ultimate mission — ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’
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#6 NVIDIA
NVIDIA’s corporate values are innovation, speed and agility, intellectual honesty amongst many others. What’s important about NVIDIA is that there is only one team that operates with no distinct hierarchy levels. Work teams are formed based on the skills and knowledge the team members possess to carry out a project, even though there are still reporting lines in place.
Another exceptional distinction about this company is the frequent risk-taking they need to do as an innovator in the technology industry and their high standards of performance.
NVIDIA’s culture supports the idea of taking risks along with taking the responsibility for the results of those risks: “We continuously take risks and regard failure as a step toward success. We treat each other with candor and respect, and strive for excellence in whatever we do.”
#7 Twilio
Twilio has a very specific way of deciding and doing things and they explicitly state these along with their company values on their website. Amongst others, transparency, people empowerment and taking initiative are crucial qualities for someone who wants to become part of the company.
Inside Twilio there is a big focus on diversity, inclusion and belonging. But also, coding.
Every Twilion needs to know how to code, but if they don’t, they get to learn how to code as part of the intensive training they receive during their first several weeks on the job. The employee introductory program says that each new employee needs to develop an app using the company’s API, and then present it to others on a Wednesday while being catered at a local restaurant.
#8 Zappos
A big part of Zappos recruitment policy is hiring people that perfectly match their company dynamic. The company’s culture inspires creativity, positivity and innovation and is nothing like the average.
All employees are required to work at the call center during their first month of employment, and this shows a big focus on delivering excellent customer support and offering their employees with the training that can make them the best brand ambassadors.
Customer service and company culture go hand in hand for Zapponians. As the Zappos team says on their site ‘We believe that if we get the culture right, then most of the other stuff — like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand or business — will be a natural byproduct. Way to go, Zappos!
Check Zappos Stories to hear why company culture matters at Zappos.
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#9 Dropbox
Dropbox’s culture is inspiring, diverse, joyful and most of all, fun! To help it remain that way, the company allows its employees to take an active role in shaping the personality of the business. Since 2011, their annual Hack Week allows employees to change scenery and go out of their usual workspaces to help them explore and think bigger.
The company focuses heavily on diversity, emphasizing the appreciation of different backgrounds and perspectives. The Dropbox community celebrates diversity and unity sharing their stories. Apart from that though, the company has a Gratitude Post — an internal postal service that allows employees to send handwritten messages of gratitude to each other which makes everyone feel seen and fosters stronger relationships.
Best motto: ‘You’re smart, figure it out’ — a principle on which the company operates, recognizing people’s talents and putting it into good use.
#10 HubSpot
HubSpot’s unique culture is inspiring its employees, customers and partners. The amount of work that was invested into cultivating an open, accepting and rewarding work environment is evident throughout all the initiatives that the company has taken so far, and also its amazing product.
HubSpot’s culture code is summarized in a massive slide document that explains who they are, and who they aspire to be. Good judgement and solving for the customer are top priorities amongst the staff who stand true to the shared values of the HEART: Humble, Empathetic, Adaptable, Remarkable, Transparent.
Best motto: ‘We’d rather be failing frequently than never trying’.
*The companies listed here come in no particular order.
Improving Company Culture Every Step of the Way
Building a company culture that allows employees to be themselves, boosts engagement, builds up morale, and offers the training they need to get the knowledge to carry out their jobs effectively, is paramount.
If a company is struggling to create a culture, using the right onboarding and training tool is the best way to start, since it can help ensure every employee is always on the same page.
What other companies can learn from these ten startups is to put their employees first. The top priority for any functional and productive workplace is to create a trusting and friendly environment in which the staff can experiment, learn new things, and thrive.
Do you know of any other startups that offer excellent company culture? Let us know!
Author Bio:
Kyriaki Raouna is a Content Creator for LearnWorlds, writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.
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