Building an Inclusive Company Culture

Jennifer Kim describes culture as the lens a team works through, shaped by hiring, conversations, decisions, and promotions, not just visible perks such as ping-pong tables. She says culture can be hard to measure, but founders can learn to lead it as they grow their teams.

Claire McDonnell says True Link has focused on inclusion since its early days, building trust and fairness through small, consistent investments. Jennifer Kim says Lever saw recruiting and retention benefits: a candidate who had a positive interview experience referred a friend, and employees stayed because they valued the team and workplace.

McDonnell identifies unchecked bias as a risk and describes responding to mistakes by solving the problem first, then reviewing how to prevent a repeat. She also recommends naming people when amplifying their ideas and recognizing contributions across teams. Kim says leaders should examine whether they genuinely value every function, and describes cross-team training and having new hires listen to sales calls to build mutual respect.

McDonnell describes a no-jerks hiring policy that looks for humility and respect through feedback questions and interactions with people at different levels. Kim says receptionists can flag disrespectful candidate behavior, while junior interviewers should have a way to share concerns. McDonnell also describes D&I training, modeling respectful feedback, and using communication workshops to help colleagues understand differences.

McDonnell says employees should have other contacts for benefits or concerns, especially when a founder also handles HR. She and Kim recommend writing policies and expectations down and investing in onboarding. Their closing advice is to make culture everyone’s business, invite team members to lead, and ensure founders empower them to do so.