Corporate culture is a frequent topic of discussion among companies, both large and small, and Railcare is no exception. Once a company has established a favourable culture, the challenge is to maintain it, particularly as the company grows and its operations expand.

Although they may not be aware of it themselves, all companies have some form of corporate culture. Eventually, even the lack of a conscious corporate culture becomes a type of culture in itself. Characteristic of successful corporate cultures is their clarity on the values governing the company and a clear vision, meaning that everyone in the company knows what the objectives are and how the company will achieve them.

“We work continuously to maintain and strengthen our culture as we grow and obviously this can be a challenge. Culture is like a perishable product, always needing to be refreshed,” says Daniel Öholm, CEO of Railcare Group. “We make a conscious effort to keep our operations within relatively small companies to maintain an ambience of familiarity.”

High degree of satisfaction among personnel

Corporate culture is crucial for job satisfaction, success, and earnings.

“On conducting an employee survey, we achieved a high response rate and favourable grades across the board, so we perceive job satisfaction among Railcare personnel as high,” says Daniel. This is also something we notice in discussions with customers. We are often told that our employees are eager, capable, and pleasant.

Ulf Marklund, Deputy CEO of Railcare Group, and founder of the company, adds:

“A strong part of our culture is our focus on solutions and being independent. This dates back to our early days, when there were no supervisors or project managers on our machines. For the first few years, the operators were who our customers met. Today, the projects are bigger, and we have supervisors there to help when multiple machines are involved. At the end of the day, however, the machine operators and locomotive drivers remain our outward face.”

Managers convey the culture

Employee motivation and commitment are determined not only by the financial objectives of the company but are also largely dependent on the style of management within the company.

“As a manager and leader, you also convey the culture, with management building on our basic values to motivate progress among your team,” says Ulf. Put simply, it is a matter of behaviour. Honesty, humility, and common sense are highly important concepts in advancing our culture forward and a great deal can be achieved having those qualities.

“When I’m out presenting the company, I often say that machines are no better than whoever is operating them. The same thing applies to a company – it will never be better than the people running it,” Daniel concludes.