I Ate Lunch Alone For Eleven Days Once. That Taught Me More About Company Culture Than Any Slide Ever Has.

Every company I've ever worked for claims to be 'collaborative and inclusive' within a week.

Usually, this appears as a slide with a stock photo of happy diverse people grinning at a laptop, probably completely stripped of any humor.

Every time I've joined, however, it's been very different to that and bore little relation to that slide.

It's more to do with one of those smaller things, the quiet things that never appear on a careers page.

Because they can appear awkward or difficult to box into bullet points.

The onboarding pack.

Everyone forgets this.

Everyone remembers who ate lunch with you on the first day.

Day three, in my opinion, is the day more relevant to our investigation.

Because this is when others return to a 'normal' working environment and you quickly discover whether you belong, are fitting in or simply appear as though you are making serious effort to appear deep in a piece of text on your phone, as the rest have made a conscious effort to head to lunch for the second week running.

I have worked in places where I was stuck in the kitchen, eating my sandwich, for eleven consecutive days, as nobody has said to me, "Are you going to grab some lunch?"

…because it never occurred that an attempt was made in order to make me feel welcome, as part of the team, instead of as something that doesn't need looking after as it clearly feels self-sufficient and self-reliant in these types of situations which, as I previously noted, clearly doesn't lead to effective support and inclusion.

Or I have worked where there was little celebration when people asked you if you were ready for some lunch when peeping their head around the door.

In the normal interactions throughout the day.

Inclusion happens in the small moments.

Inclusion is where people engage when people speak, "you know it's nearly lunchtime", so that other people can actually add.

When in non-inclusive places, what you learn at work mostly consists of hearing everyone else and what more they have to contribute.

I am sure in my experiences, and what I've learnt over time through various ways people behave around what new people say, this must demonstrate whether someone's workplace is able to foster an environment of sharing unfinished thoughts or not and they then avoid doing it.

Culture fit does some truly dreadful damage.

'Culture fit' does some truly dreadful damage.

The main goal should not necessarily be how well somebody fits into a given workplace, but how much that person brings which cannot otherwise be encountered by people around them, therefore making something different which benefits everybody to some degree in the workplace overall.

The company could strive for "what will new people bring and how will they shape this place and enrich all of our workings" rather than "are people able to communicate adequately."

Inclusion is tested when you are not the person speaking.

Inclusion is often something that needs to happen every day on various issues, especially in those meetings where one isn't presenting nor speaking and often is just there.

So when someone simply asks, "what do you think to that one?" I learn an awful lot about people, whether it shows a respect of individuality and how they wish to receive support and input into issues and how easily the speaker listens in comparison to only needing people to simply speak about what's obvious to hear already.

So from the feedback I can tell the other person finds listening better than speaking in particular instances which would contribute to people understanding that each individual's opinion and viewpoint carries its own potential for improvement in tasks.

The loneliest experience can happen inside the best culture presentation.

The most lonely at work experience I've had has been working at the best company culture presentation.

The clear values listed, including what seemed at the time to translate into actual work and real support to new hires such as the innovation that was to flourish amongst us, the diverse team dynamics, the all-encompassing 'psychological safety', all included as a colourful chart.

A presentation deck and not a job, I had little input into most things even where I began to actually form thoughts on them because you just hear about everyone else's perspectives instead in meetings more so.

Performance pieces by the sound of it.

This again demonstrates for me that culture is wherever people put it in, rather than if anyone writes it down, the key difference from listening to people's opinions at work or performing.

Forget the careers page. Look at a Tuesday.

If culture consideration is key to you, when hiring consider a Tuesday.

Forget the careers page.

Always ever ignore these.

When someone asks, "what's a typical Tuesday like?" are people starting in effective meetings, how are they chaired and at what time do the meetings actually normally finish.

Or do they consistently exceed.

Are new people welcomed in organically?

So to know how to work somewhere well, one needs to reflect on the environment which should ideally be able to make people welcome without explicit instruction.

And how a proposal or idea received from a new person and in what context should show whether someone will be heard clearly and as clearly as somebody else, it's what someone brings that must be considered as far as how well an employee integrates, how willing a person is to introduce differences or challenges to existing knowledge.