What sort of company culture is in operation?

• Are the systems the key to everything? In other words, do the systems work for you or do you work for the systems?
• Is innovation and creativity encouraged or is everything done ‘by the book’?
• How much interaction between departments is there? Is it all at manager level, or do staff at all levels communicate interdepartmentally?
• How much information flows down from the top? How much flows to the top?
• Is the company a rumour factory or is everything open and information freely available to all?
• When major moves are on the agenda – product launches, redundancy, mergers, new premises, new equipment, changes in direction – at what point are the staff informed?

-Are they told early on, once the plans are clear and work needs to be started?

or

-Are only those who need to know told and everyone else finds out when there is no way to keep it from them any longer?

• Are family members permitted to work for the company or not?
• How much do the staff socialize?