Home Depot's Corporate Culture

In any successful strategic implementation, one key element is the corporate culture. The corporate culture in a company is a collection of the values, norms, beliefs, and attitudes which governs how people behave in an organization. It is how company employees and management interact with fellow employees and also stakeholders outside the company. These values that are shared in the company helps dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. To maximize customer satisfaction, Home Depot’s employee’s exhibit the company’s corporate culture. This is how they stand out from their competitors. The corporate culture helps build a motivational environment for workers and it helps make customers feel welcome. This is how they have a competitive

advantage.
Home Depot’s corporate culture main features are; the inverted pyramid, excellence in service, people-centricity and collaboration. The Home Depot Company takes its customer satisfaction seriously, so the culture is oriented on an inverted pyramid. The inverted pyramid makes it easier for the front-line workers to relate with customers and help them make key decisions concerning customers. Home Depot has the same values-based culture today that they had when Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank opened the first store in 1979. These include things like giving back, taking care of each other, respect, creating value and customer service.
Home Depot’s inverted pyramid presents the prioritization of some of its stakeholders in the company’s strategies and organizational culture.

The customers are the top priority. Next are the front-line associates, then field support, and then corporate support. The CEO comes last. In this prioritization, Home Depot’s organizational culture ensures that corporate values are inculcated among all employees, especially the front-line workers at the stores. In addition, this feature of the organizational culture highlights the value and contributions of front-line workers, translating to Home Depot’s managerial approach that recognizes idea and action contributions from

subordinates.
Given that this is the most unique thing about Home Depot’s culture, their executive team sits at the bottom of the pyramid and the associates are serving customers are at the top. They believe this is the secret, because if management are at the bottom they bear the responsibility for their actions and the decisions made. It’s a heavy weight, considering Home Depot has more than 2,000 stores and 400,000 employees. Management bear the weight to free up associates to take care of customers. It really all goes back to a Bernie Marcus saying that Home Depot still lives today: If Home Depot takes care of the associates, the associates will take care of the customers, and everything else will take care of itself.
Home Depot tried to change the culture once, but it didn’t work.

At the end of 2000, the founders were thinking about succession planning and the need to bring in someone who would take Home Depot from what had been the fastest-growing retailer on earth to one that needed to grow with more infrastructure and technology—things they hadn’t really focused on. They brought in a new leader from the outside to run the company. This person was experienced, but he turned the pyramid around so that leadership was at the top and associates at the bottom. That made the associates responsible for the actions taken. Home Depot sort of lost their way during that period, and Home Depot’s market share receded. In early 2007 Frank Blake became CEO. On Frank’s first day as CEO, he read from a book written by Bernie and Arthur that talked about the inverted pyramid. Frank flipped the pyramid back around, so that he was at the bottom and associates were at the

top.
Home Depot’s corporate culture also emphasizes excellent service. The company achieves high quality service through training programs and a human resource strategy that hires field experts like carpenters and plumbers. These experts provide expert advice when customers make purchase decisions. This characteristic of the organizational culture enhances competitiveness and is integrated in Home Depot’s generic strategy.
To discuss fully about Home depot’s organizational culture we are going to take into consideration the inverted pyramid also noting the attitude exhibited by people towards their work. Workers are advised for the business to thrive, to relate well with customers. This culture is what in fact relates to the quality of service rendered by a company.
This culture helps foster a good relationship among employees. In other words, it fosters team work as it is believed that working jointly to achieve a set goal is more effective than individuals adopting whatever method they deem appropriate in meeting a set goal.