Culture code: Four employee engagement lessons from HubSpot

Hubspot has been grabbing the headlines for all the right reasons lately, thanks largely to a ground-breaking employee engagement policy that has seen them rocketing up Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list.

Founded in 2006, this multi-million dollar inbound marketing enterprise has enjoyed exponential growth over the last decade, fuelled by the strength of a thriving corporate culture focused on self-improvement, transparency and employee wellness.

When Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah established their small digital start-up 10 years ago, they made it their priority to create the kind of company that they would love to work for – one that promoted an authentic culture of happiness by empowering its employees to work towards collaborative success.

Today, employee engagement remains a top strategic priority for Hubspot, treated not merely as a ‘nice-to-have’, but rather as a fundamental driver of business success. Here, fun is a serious matter, with each cultural initiative attached to its own set of associated KPIs and success metrics, which enable the company to constantly improve and understand the impact that internal engagement has on the broader business bottom line.

The results of this intensive approach to employee engagement speak for themselves. With offices across the world, a growth rate of over 50% and an employee base in excess of 600, Hubspot is going places fast, fuelled by a workforce invested in its ethos and passionate about its success.

So how can you go about replicating this winning formula? Here are 4 key tips to get you started:

EMBRACE CHANGE

How does HubSpot keep company politics to a minimum, promote a culture of adaptability, and inspire their employees to improve all at the same time? It’s quite simple: make employees swap desks every three months. While this might seem unnecessarily quirky or even disruptive, it is in fact is a very effective way of encouraging company-wide interaction and promoting understanding of the business across the ranks.

INVEST IN PEOPLE

HubSpot places great value on advancing and upskilling its employees, treating each and every individual as a long-term business investment. All employees receive a $5000 yearly allowance to put towards certified educational courses, and are afforded access to in-house leadership training, personality development courses, mentoring programmes as well as to conferences offering valuable insights into the marketplace. And whilst it might seem like a risk to invest so significantly in employees when they could just as easily take their newly acquired skills elsewhere, HubSpot believes that an empowered, educated workforce is not only well worth the investment, but also far less likely to seek out greener pastures.

ESTABLISH PURPOSE

Hubspot realised very early on that there would be no employees to create a culture for – or even a business at all – without their customers. That’s why they created their SFTC (Solve for the customer) motto, and tasked employees to do everything with the customers in mind. The lesson? When people are driven by a clear purpose and an achievable goal, they have a reason to be committed to working towards success for themselves and, ultimately, your business.

PRESERVE POSITIVE WORK-LIFE BALANCE

As the lines between work and play become ever blurrier, HubSpot is going to great lengths to ensure that their employees live a balanced, healthy life, irrespective of time or place. The company’s headquarters are more health spa than office space, home to a wealth of nutritious snacks, exercise classes, standing desks and even napping sessions. And for employees less inclined to indulge in the joys of HubSpot HQ, working from home is a perfectly acceptable alternative. Ultimately, HubSpot believes that any employee performs best in an environment in which they feel comfortable and creative, and encourages all staff members to find their ‘happy place’ – both for their own and the company’s benefit.