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Opinion: How We Built Company Culture

SBJ Economic Growth Survey: The New Workforce

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At all of our companies, culture can drive every decision we make, including hiring and terminations, onboarding and training, ongoing feedback and development, policy and process.

The decision to prioritize culture first required our company to clarify and define our cultural values.

At OMG Commerce, we established three core values: care, fun and constant improvement. After recognizing that people assign very different cultural intentions than our objectives to each singular word, we spent focused time defining them into several statements that are our baselines for communication, for how we act internally and toward our clients, and when we’re faced with any decisions. By clearly defining the culture and consistently acting on it, it has become ingrained in our team. This provides the pathway for accomplishing our mission and vision.

We believe our culture is of the highest importance.

Our culture establishes our foundational purpose, gives us a competitive advantage and compels people to join our team. As well, it increases retention and reduces client churn. People generally have a desire to make an impact and be part of something bigger than themselves, and our culture provides that. We are committed to daily living out our vision of accelerating our client, team and individual growth through transparency, accountability and vulnerability. To do so requires us to see and treat each team member as a valuable individual with unique skills and desires.

Our culture creates an environment that allows us to bond as a team, acknowledging and appreciating our differences while maintaining universal expectations.

The word culture has become so commonplace that it might seem easy, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve learned that maintaining a specific culture requires intentional effort by every team member to protect and promote the values.

There is a trickle-through effect that has to be led by executive leadership, and it’s cultivated through day-to-day involvement from every member of the team. Without full buy-in by leadership to let our culture values dictate our decisions and actions, and team commitment to do the same, OMG would not be the awesome place to work that it is.

Sarah Edwards is chief operating officer at OMG Commerce. She can be reached at sarah@omgcommerce.com.


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