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 How Adobe’s Company Culture Drives Continuous Success

How Adobe’s Company Culture Drives Continuous Success

September 20, 2019

The fast pace of change can make it challenging to maintain a sustainable, and profitable business. So it helps to look at how others are managing to succeed. In my blog this week I look for clues at Adobe, one of the world’s top brands.

Adobe was founded almost 40 years ago and has established an internal culture that drives success. According to Glassdoor, Adobe employees rate working there at 4.4/5 on average, putting the company in their top 30 US employers, based on employee opinion.

 

What makes the Adobe culture so remarkable?

A quick review of the company website reveals that Chairman, President and CEO Shantanu Narayen is passionate about building and empowering teams to drive product innovation and to scale Adobe’s business globally.

This provides a small insight into the approach to the culture at Adobe, whilst the many leader interviews and other published articles provide us with even further information.

A recent Forbes article explains how Adobe has put the employee at the center of their global well-being program, which is regarded to be a large part of defining the culture at the company. Other staff perks include paid family vacations, health care, and onsite yoga facilities. Their approach to working flexibility is also a major perk, with home working, adjustable working schedules and no restrictions on vacation days, as they are at the discretion of the employee’s manager.

Adobe’s encouragement of employee development is unique with a learning fund of up to $10,000 per year for degrees and certain certifications. That is some serious financial commitment to help their employees to continually develop their skills and knowledge.

You can find out more on my blog about how Adobe creates a culture of creativity and loyalty.

 

What we can learn from Adobe

Small businesses can do a lot when designing their businesses and creating the business brand to ensure they build a brand based around a strong company culture. What we can learn from Adobe if we want to establish our own business culture along positive lines is to think about what we can do as leaders of our business to

  1. Make team members feel valued and motivated by taking the time to show appreciation of good work, thanking people, giving out awards, or financial perks based on performance.
  2. Empower the team by providing the development support and freedom to them to try new ways of working, rather than having to stick to the same old ways. This could just involve giving people time off to do some research on an area of work that interests them, or familiarizing themselves with some new software, etc.
  3. Be committed to employee wellbeing. Adobe’s wellbeing program is recognized as one of the key factors in establishing an award-winning company culture. By introducing wellbeing perks, our businesses can all benefit from healthier, happier employees that are more committed to going the extra mile in their roles.

I will be focusing on more brands in my upcoming blogs to share some of the tried and tested approaches of successful companies so as to help small businesses to grow their own brand.  Be sure to check out my blogs over on the Azrights.com website.