People make your culture (if they want to) - The day I took my three year old to a business meeting

By the way - this is not my daughter!

It goes to show that people make corporate culture (if they want to).

I've worked closely with a client from when they set up their first business in 2008. They have subsequently set up a business called the Happiness Index in the last 4 years. They were running a networking breakfast event recently called the HR Punks on a Monday and I really wanted to go. What I needed to do was take my three year old daughter with me, as I usually have every Monday off work and I have spent that time with her since she was born. My eldest daughter, who is now 7 years old, and I used to have the same time where we also had Monday’s together. It is an amazing bonding experience to be with and engage with your children every week and I am lucky as I run my own business that I have been able to do this since 2012.

What is super important to myself and my friends at the Happiness Index is family. Family values were definitely prevalent in their last business, 4Ps Marketing and very relevant in their current business. How that translates into everyday behaviour is crucial to their success.

As the event was a morning breakfast I had to take my 7 year old to school and then take my three year old to the business meeting on the train and she was fantastic. The openness and transparency from the Happiness Index about taking her to the meeting was great. When I posed the question to their WhatsApp group I asked if if I could get her to come with me as I didn’t to miss out on connecting to the Happiness Index staff and their contacts and the answer was ‘perfect, bring her along’.

What it shows me is the culture of a great business at play and the openness to people to just go’ fantastic – bring her along’. You would think that bringing a three year old to a business meeting or a networking event, would be tricky, but she had her toys to play with, she had her books and some food and she was content.

The main thing on why this is possible is the level of honesty about my decision. I explained what I wanted to do and the Happiness Index replied with here is how you can do and they were able to work things out for us to make it smooth sailing.

I have already told a few clients about bringing my daughter to an event and they were amazed that it was possible.

How open and transparent is your organisation about the way they work, the way they incorporate family into business and what initiatives do they have to embrace the ‘family’ values? Does your staff create the corporate culture to make this possible, or even seem like a normal, everyday occurence?