Cotterill: Reinforcing corporate culture with personnel policies

Cotterill

By Chris W. Cotterill

Everyone’s talking about corporate culture and employee engagement these days because talent attraction and retention are so critical to the success of every company. So much goes into developing culture, and lawyers can have a positive impact on their company’s culture just by modernizing the old, boring personnel policy manual.

At the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, our core purpose and values were established by our executive team. Under the leadership of our secretary of commerce and president of the IEDC, we work hard to stay true to these guiding principles. Our manual starts with our core purpose and values, and it includes policies designed to help us ensure our entire team stays true to our purpose and values.

The process of shaping our policies was arduous but well worth it. We started with a set of best practices and made thoughtful changes to tailor the manual to the special qualities of the IEDC, as every company should. For me, as general counsel when we started the process, it was gratifying to reach consensus among our leadership on how we approach different personnel-related issues. I recommend every general counsel go through such a process.

Since then, it has become our practice to update these policies on an annual basis, as they must evolve as the needs of our customers, employees and other stakeholders evolve. This is an important part of our continuous improvement efforts at the IEDC.

Recently, we made a mid-year update, which was driven by Governor Eric Holcomb’s direction to adopt a modern workplace harassment prevention policy across state government. Our previous non-harassment policy was good, but the governor’s policy was better. Because of his leadership, the IEDC team and state government employees now have been trained on this very important policy.

Having clear policies helps inform employees of basic standards and evolving norms. It helps proactively prevent problems. And, of course, it helps hold those who make unfortunate decisions accountable in a consistent manner. In most instances, we can work through an issue, learn and move forward together, but where there is “zero tolerance,” we take action.

But our policies are not merely a list of risk management-oriented “Don’ts.” We have many more encouraging aspects that are designed to reinforce our corporate culture.

For example, our diversity policy emphasizes why diversity and inclusion are so important to our shared success. Our performance management policy helps us achieve our goals and continuously improve. And our social media policy helps our employees appropriately spread the message that we are taking business to the next level in “A State That Works.”

Altogether, our personnel policies undergird all that we do. They are designed to encourage mutual respect and understanding, transformational improvements and individual and organizational success. They help us to be very intentional in how we hire, communicate and so much more.

As a result, we have a more collaborative and results-oriented culture that is helping fuel the economic growth here in Indiana. And that’s thanks in part to the not-so-boring-after-all personnel policy manual.•

Chris W. Cotterill is chief operating officer of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. Opinions expressed are those of the author.