What makes a Great Place to Work®

Long-term business success starts with your company culture. Brent Vander Waal, CEO of ITA Group, recently joined Julian Lute of Great Place to Work for a conversation on the power of putting your people first. 

When leadership invests in employee engagement through recognition, consistency and a high level of trust, it drives retention, fuels innovation and elevates performance across the board. 

ITA Group has earned a Great Place to Work^® certification since 2018. But our investment in employee experience doesn’t rely on any label. It’s something Brent reiterates at every team member update, “Take care of each other and the rest will take care of itself.” 

Keep reading to get ITA Group's company culture playbook. 

Company culture is all about relationships 

Transformative culture starts with employee experience. ITA Group’s approach to employee experience is similar to a three-legged stool. The three parts include an employees’ relationship to their manager, to their everyday responsibilities and to their coworkers.   

To build an effective company culture, ITA Group focuses on these three aspects to consistently communicate and demonstrate to team members that they’re a priority. 

Relationship to leadership 

Managers reinforce your message and encourage the behavior you want to see on teams. At ITA Group, 95% of employees feel that managers show sincere interest in them as people. 

Relationship to work 

Employees should feel that their work is appreciated and that it contributes to the team’s overall success. Workplace recognition is a tangible way to show everyone is in it together.  

Relationship to peers 

Peer recognition fosters teamwork and a positive environment. At ITA Group, 93% of employees report that people are consistently recognized for their efforts. 

“There’s not one silver bullet for great company culture,” Brent explained. “But you need consistency. Something for people to rely on.”  

These three touchpoints in the employee journey keeps us on track. It enables us to keep a consistent strategy where we regularly engage our people, increasing everyone’s understanding of our brand’s core values and our relationship to our organization.  

A great culture strategy starts with listening 

As an organization, you set goals with your core values, your mission and purpose, but your people choose how to live them out every day. At ITA Group, we see company culture as a dialogue between leadership and employees.  

“Our culture is not a program, it’s a mindset,” Brent emphasized. “We want to get this into our DNA versus just checking a box on a program.” That's why we use several resources to check in on employee satisfaction. 

Great Place To Work Trust Index 

This is a great data point for listening and helps teams identify opportunities to enhance the employee journey  

ITA Group’s Cooleaf employee engagement platform 

Employees use our own platform to recognize peers. Approximately 80% of our recognitions are non-monetary, highlighting the sentimental significance of the recognition for both the giver and the recipient. 

Employee engagement feeds our business strategy 

ITA Group leaders look at company culture when weighing potential acquisitions. Learning about their culture, sharing our approach and using the Great Place to Work surveys to help find opportunities to grow their employee engagement.  

How can your culture strategy speak across generations in your company?  

We’re proud of our employee retention and increased engagement. But this also comes with a responsibility to continue a thriving relationship with tenured employees across multiple demographics.  

“Good company culture crosses all generations,” Brent acknowledged. “What resonates varies from person to person. Maybe that’s having town halls where we all come together. Maybe it’s written communication or something on-demand.” 

There’s no one “right way” to engage an entire organization. Serving multiple generations provides opportunities to capture each employee’s preference of activities, communications and interests. 

High trust leadership is the secret to success 

When building culture, companies need to create something that employees can rely on. In the same way that they want to build a business that their customers can rely on. And that comes down to leadership. 

“If you can instill work culture into your leaders, it has an exponential impact,” Brent explained. “All of our results are based on effective leadership and high trust.” Be it 97% employee retention or 99% client retention.  

Great managers and leaders drive cultural transformation by truly living the workplace values and purpose. They shape the day-to-day experience for our employees, and that culture brings out the best in our teams. Our leadership relies on tools like employee recognition, core values and consistent communication to cultivate team engagement. 

Related: Why great leaders are essential to the employee experience 

Live your core values 

At ITA Group, we encourage employees and leadership to embrace our core values (Act Like Owners, Solve Problems, Be Authentic, Serve Others and Have Fun) with a “Be the One” mentality. That means “Be the One” who takes that project idea to the next level. Or even “Be the One” who asks a team member about their weekend. “Be the One” who goes above and beyond for a client. 

This philosophy encourages everyone to embrace their power in the organization by putting themselves forward. 

"Be the One” isn’t a core value. Instead, it’s a guide on how our employees can embody our core values. It tells us how we can be better teammates and how we can lead to a better solution. More importantly, this approach encourages us to listen, speak up and try new things. 

We integrate this mindset into our employer brand and include it in our employee recognitions and communications too. “It really creates this environment of gratitude, recognition. We’re all in this together,” added Brent. 

How can teams adopt a transformational culture?  

There’s no one “silver bullet,” like Brent said, for building a successful company culture. Instead, organizations can take a page from ITA Group’s playbook: investing in your people starts by reviewing the employee experience. 

Understanding what your teams need and what resonates with them shapes your strategy. Consistency, engaged leadership and listening tools like recognition or the Great Place to Work index will help your HR team make a program a thriving workplace culture. 

If you want to learn more about how ITA Group fosters company culture into a winning business strategy, tune in to the full episode of the Great Place To Work podcast with our CEO Brent Vander Waal.