What fast-growing businesses need
Something that captures who you are
Before you can communicate your culture to new people, you need to have articulated it yourself. What are your values, really, not just the words on the website, but the way they show up in decisions and behaviour? What makes your business different to work for? What do you expect from people?
A way to share it that doesn’t rely on memory
When you’re small, culture is transmitted through proximity. People watch how the founders behave and take their cues from that. As the team grows, you can’t rely on that mechanism. You need something tangible that a new hire can engage with on day one, without needing to absorb it through osmosis over six months. A culture book is one of the simplest, most effective ways to do this.
Leaders who model it consistently
Documents alone won’t carry the culture. What carries it is leaders and managers behaving in line with what’s written down, every day, in front of the team. If your values say “we respect each other” and a director regularly cuts people off in meetings, the document loses its credibility within a week. Codifying culture only works if your senior team is willing to be held to the same standards.
A plan for what comes next
Culture documentation is not a one-and-done exercise. As the business evolves, the culture should evolve with it. Build in a process for reviewing and updating it, and treat it as a live tool rather than a static document.
Where culture usually drifts first
When culture starts to slip, it rarely shows up everywhere at once. There are predictable places to look first:
- Hiring decisions. Managers under pressure to fill roles start hiring for skills rather than values. The bar quietly drops.
- Communication style. The relaxed, direct way the founders talk to each other gets misread by new starters and turns into something less considered.
- Decision-making. Decisions that used to be made together start happening in silos. People stop knowing why things happen.
- Onboarding. What was a personal welcome from the founder becomes a shared Google Drive folder and a half-day of admin.
None of these are catastrophic on their own. Together, they’re how a brilliant culture quietly stops feeling brilliant.
Quick wins you can put in place this month
You don’t need a six-week project to start protecting your culture. Some of the highest-impact moves are small ones:
- Write a one-page version of your values and how they show up in real decisions. Share it with the whole team.
- Build a proper Day 1 plan for new hires. A founder coffee, a clear walkthrough of how you work and an honest conversation about what’s expected.
- Review your last three hires. Did you screen for values as well as skills? If not, build a values question into the interview.
- Ask your longest-serving employees what they don’t want to lose. Their answers will tell you exactly what to protect.
None of these need budget. All of them buy you time and clarity while you build something more substantial.
How we helped AgriRS manage their growth
AgriRS are global agricultural recruitment specialists who grew from two to fifteen people in three years. That kind of growth is exciting. It’s also the kind of growth that can outpace a business’s ability to keep its culture coherent.
Through Worcestershire County Council’s workforce planning support, they came to us for help creating a culture book that would pull their existing documentation together and give the growing team a clear, shared understanding of who they are.
We designed a 15-page digital culture book that included a welcome note, their mission and values, employee perks and stories and practical information for the team. The process itself was as valuable as the outcome.
Their Managing Director, Claire Morgan, told us:
“Having grown from 2 members of staff to circa 15 in 3 years, we are seeing a very different requirement of our time as Directors. The support from WCC and Limelite HR has given us confidence in our provision of benefits and information for our growing workforce. The culture book 100% fitted with where we were in our business growth plan but wasn’t something we would have thought of without their input. We have expanded our SharePoint overhaul project to include an intranet which will showcase much of the culture book. Without the funding for the culture book, it’s unlikely we would have launched an intranet for another couple of years.”
One document became the catalyst for a wider set of improvements to how the business communicates internally. That’s what codifying culture at the right moment can unlock.
When is the right time to do this?
Before you think you need it. By the time culture drift is visible, some of it has already become embedded. The right time to capture and communicate your culture is when the business is still small enough that you know exactly what it is, but growing fast enough that you can’t rely on everyone picking it up naturally.
As a rough guide, the moment to start thinking seriously about it is around hire number five or six. The moment to actually have something written down is around hire number ten. If you’re between five and twenty people and growing, that window is probably now.
Our HR project support service is built for businesses in exactly this position, and you can find onboarding and culture templates in our HR shop. CIPD research consistently shows that organisations with strong, well-defined cultures see better retention, faster onboarding and higher employee engagement.
If you’re scaling your team and want to make sure your culture keeps pace with your growth, let’s talk about what that looks like for your business.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call
About the author
Lisa Murphy FCIPD, CEO and Founder at Limelite HR & Learning. Multi-award winning HR and leadership expert and Fellow of the CIPD, specialising in strategic HR, inclusion and organisational development. Connect on LinkedIn.
