Remote First - Defining and enhancing value-based culture

This thesis’s main objective was to define and enhance Company X’s current culture and make further development suggestions. Company X built and described the current values with employees and management in December 2019. At the heart of this study were the company values, and the purpose of the thesis was to understand Company X’s value-based culture from the organization and employee perspective. The operating model in a startup can involve uncertainty, especially when it is at the beginning of its journey. Culture is recognized as a critical element for success and growth. Every organization has a culture, be it conscious or unconscious. If culture is not defined or managed, it tends to form on its own. Culture becomes important when growing from a startup to a scaleup. Therefore, it is essential to give it a thought before it takes a direction that is not aligned with the strategy. The theoretical framework of this thesis was built around two themes: organizational culture and remote work. Organizational culture covers frameworks and models by well-known organizational culture researchers, and the latest research and articles complemented these approaches. Remote work focused on managing and enhancing the remote work culture. Research and development methods included two quantitative surveys. The current state analysis studied employees’ perspectives of the organizational culture and the data was collected in connection with an annual employee survey conducted in March 2021. Company X’s ideal culture analysis studied the founders’ thoughts of Company X’s ideal culture. A comparison and gap analysis were made between an actual culture and the ideal culture based on the two surveys conducted. Based on this study, it seemed that Company X’s current culture corresponds quite closely to the ideal culture. The thesis has gathered information about Company X’s current culture, the extent to which employees and founders agree, and which areas could be developed. It seems that there were no themes found on which employees and founders would have completely disagreed. However, a strong organizational culture is not a permanent state and requires constant attention and enhancement. Based on this data, it seems that Company X could re-examine the values and co-create value norms that will help employees to live up to the values in everyday work. Other development themes that emerged were goal setting, leadership, and work community. The mapping of the current and the ideal culture was successful, and the thesis brought up valuable information about the state of Company X’s organizational culture. The management team found the results interesting, and the study was seen as valuable. Based on these findings, Company X can strengthen the connection between culture, values, and strategy. First development suggestions are planned to be implemented in autumn 2021