Opinions

What Makes a Company Great? Culture is Key

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When it comes to understanding customers, Michael Dell will say you need to have big ears. As a company that recently closed one of the biggest tech mergers in history with EMC, we made listening a top priority as we looked to unify our company culture as part of the new Dell Technologies. We turned our collective ears toward team members from both former Dell and EMC to define our corporate culture as the driver of how we run the business, go to market, work effectively together and provide inspirational leadership.

We understood the importance of having a strong culture as our company’s cornerstone. Look at any HR or employment website these days and you’ll see article after article advising job-seekers to carefully take a company’s culture into account. What we heard from tens of thousands of our own team members on this front was inspiring and greatly informed the development of what we proudly call today our Culture Code.

Dell Culture Code

Our Core Values

The results of our listening led to the creation of a powerful set of values, beliefs and leadership principles that serve to unite the company and make for a great place to work. Simply put, Dell Technologies’ Culture Code was built atop extensive feedback from our team members around the world and encompasses how we lead, inspire and work together to create value for our customers, communities and our people. Overall, our team members resoundingly shared that our top five values for long-term success include:

  1. Customers: We believe our customer relationships are the ultimate differentiator and foundation for our success.
  2. Winning Together: We believe in and value our people. As a team, we perform better, are smarter and have more fun getting the job done.
  3. Innovation: We believe our ability to innovate and cultivate breakthrough thinking is an engine for growth, success and progress.
  4. Results: We believe in being accountable to an exceptional standard of excellence and performance.
  5. Integrity: We believe integrity must always govern our fierce desire to win.

A Culture for Success

Award-winning speaker and author Simon Sinek declares, “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” It’s a great philosophy and how all businesses should approach their own corporate culture. To better understand Dell’s Culture Code, I encourage you to check out our new video.

About the Author: Steve Price

Steve Price serves as Dell’s Chief Human Resources Officer, leading both Human Resources and Global Facilities. As CHRO, Steve is responsible for setting the overall HR strategy and solving the biggest culture, leadership, talent, and performance challenges of Dell and Dell EMC. Steve positions the work of HR to accelerate the performance of the company, create a culture where our team members can be their best and do their best work, and differentiate our company with inspiring leaders. This work allows us to be celebrated as a great company and great place to work. We are widely recognized for our industry-leading practices in team member engagement, Diversity and Inclusion, Connected Workplace, and Employee Resource Groups. Steve joined Dell in 1997 and has served in many key leadership roles throughout the HR organization, including vice president of HR operations, global talent management, and vice president of HR for the global consumer business, and Americas, and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Human Resources. Prior to joining Dell, Steve spent 13 years with SC Johnson Wax in Racine, Wisconsin. Having started his career there in sales, he later moved into HR where he held a variety of senior positions. Steve is the executive sponsor for the Black Employee Resource Group, dedicated to creating opportunities for black team members to build relationships across the company which help them grow and thrive. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business from Southwestern Oklahoma State University and an MBA from the University of Central Oklahoma.
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