But throw in a few growth spurts and things can start to shift. The camaraderie becomes diluted, the culture less connected. People may lose sight of where they fit in the overall picture. The trust, transparency, community, respect and positivity that impacted personal lives as well as business processes changes. A lot of that is inevitable, as growing organisations require more thought-through internal communication strategies. Add agile working to the mix, and it can be even harder to maintain the connective tissue that gives startups their energetic vibe, their USP.

WFH, WFA, WFO?

Thanks to the pandemic and changes to the way we live and earn, agile working is here to stay – whether that’s working from home (WFH), working from anywhere (WFA), or a hybrid of either of those with time working from the office (WFO).

The question is, are these changes going to make it even harder for startups to maintain the dynamic internal cultures that help them stay strong as they grow? Or will it encourage people to take a more individualistic approach to their working lives rather than thinking ‘we’re in this together’?

Flexibility versus support

Flexible working has big plus points. Take parents or guardians of school-age kids, or people with additional physical and neuro-diverse needs. In the bad old days, many would have had to accept low-paid roles or been unable to join the workforce at all. Hopefully, in this brave new world, much of that will change.

But there are still people who slip through the cracks. The new starters, the career progressors, those that need mentoring. Perhaps we need to check ourselves to make sure we don’t become self-centred or lose sight of the role we play in building a strong company culture.

Onboarding for the new agile age

Those of us who have been working for many years may remember our early days, when senior members of the team offered advice and steered us along the right path. We may have been assigned a mentor, or been given access to a manager so we could ask questions.

Great onboarding can improve employee retention and productivity. According to Northpass, a learning platform that specialises in scaling companies, businesses with a structured onboarding process saw a 60% year-on-year growth in revenue, and 63% saw an improvement in customer satisfaction in 2022. According to human resources group Bamboo, new recruits who have had a good onboarding experience are 18 times more committed to their employer.

The trick is finding out what that might look like for your startup. For some, it might mean WFO to start with, and requesting other team members to do the same in the short term. For others, it’ll be about opening up lines of communication and making people feel connected in a structured, meaningful way.

What’s clear is that on-boarders need to feel like they work for someone, not anyone – or they might just move on rather than seeing a future for themselves internally. Get it right and there are big gains in terms of finance and energy invested.

If those new recruits can see a future for themselves, with opportunities clearly signposted, with training built in, they’re less likely to move on when they feel a need to progress to the next level.

Building culture in a new working world

Culture trumps strategy every time, but it doesn’t happen by accident – especially as you grow. The right internal comms need to be put in place; culture needs to be nurtured. We’re still in the early stages of this post-pandemic work-culture shift – we’re going to be refining and adjusting work-life for weeks, months and years.

But if startups want to evoke the good will and energy needed to guarantee lift-off, they’ll need to take their internal comms strategies seriously – and put people at the heart of everything.