Most founders say people come first. Here's how to tell who means it

Most founders will tell you their people come first. Olly Culverhouse reckons you can tell who actually means it by what happens in a bad month. He’s the founder of Signable, a Bristol-based document and contract signing platform. The company has 8,000 customers across the UK, Europe and America and since its creation over a decade ago, it has been run in a very intentional way.

“I never wanted it to be a reason that people missed out on big life events. I subscribe to ‘you work to live rather than live to work’,” Culverhouse says. It is the kind of line that sounds like it was written by a PR agency, and Culverhouse knows it. His argument is that the words count for nothing without years of consistency behind them.

“If you're having a bad month and suddenly all the nice cultural stuff gets thrown out the window and then when you’re having a good month, it suddenly comes back,” he says, “people don't know where they stand. Consistency gives trust and stability in what you’re doing to employees.”

Why consistency beats generosity

That consistency is what many scaling businesses lose all too often. Building culture is easy in the early days, when you can crowd around a couple of banks of desks and make sure every individual is healthy and happy. But as a company expands and commercial goals ladder up the priority list, people and culture tend to snake their way down it.

Culverhouse’s defence against that drift is to keep making the same call, whatever the month: “Obviously I've got an ego because I'm a business owner. But I also feel like I'm humble enough not to be driven by that ego. All of my decisions are the right thing for employees in that moment, rather than for the right thing for the company, the cheapest thing for the company, etc. It's that repetitive, consistent decision-making that people see.”

The company, which has around 65 employees, formalised its values framework around five years ago, but Culverhouse is clear that the framework followed the behaviour rather than the other way round. It is the product of a decade of embedded culture rather than an away-day exercise.

“If people were working hard and achieving stuff, then that's great,” he says. “We had a company meeting on values and put them on the wall, but you get found out if your actions don't reflect what you say.”

Backing culture with real investment

One of those actions plays out in Signable’s people department. For an organisation of 65, it has four employees in the speciality. “I’ve spoken to people with 500 or 1000 employees that have got two in the people team,” says Culverhouse. “But then all they're doing is hiring and firing. They're not building the programs or systems needed to retain the best people.”

The investment shows up in the benefits on offer. Perks for working at Signable include unlimited holidays, paid sick leave, private rooms for religious observance, meditation and reflection and a £50 monthly wellbeing and development budget, which was used 313 times by staff last year.

But Culverhouse is wary of the perks becoming the point. What keeps them honest, he argues, is checking whether employees actually want them. Signable runs quarterly employee surveys alongside weekly one-to-ones between staff and their managers.

“They are a space to share feedback both ways on salary, career progression, development and any challenges that they’ve got outside of work,” Culverhouse says of the latter.

“Everyone is empowered to provide that feedback and be honest about things. Some of our surveys are anonymous, but I don’t think results will be any different based on whether they’re anonymous or not.”

The numbers suggest the team is listening back. In recent employee surveys, every member of staff said the company actively promotes mental and physical health, and 96 per cent said they wanted to stay at Signable for a long time. This sentiment has resulted in a 98 per cent annual retention rate and a top-five place on the Great Place to Work’s UK’s Best Workplaces (Small) list for 2026.

What happens when trust is broken

The real test of all this comes when the trust is abused and Culverhouse’s instinct is not to retreat to the rulebook: “If they break your trust, then you've got the wrong people. Don't chastise or blame the majority for the actions of the minority.

“For example, if you've got a policy of unlimited holiday and a couple of people who abuse it, understand why it was abused and put in better guardrails or communicate it more. Don’t scrap it and go back to the old way of doing things, you have to make sure that you are adjusting for the right thing.”

It is, in the end, the same point he started with. The culture is not the perks, the surveys or the words on the wall. It is whether the decisions hold when they are tested because, as Culverhouse puts it, you get found out if your actions don’t reflect what you say.

What can leaders learn?

Judge culture by the bad months, not the good ones. Anything you offer in a strong quarter and withdraw in a weak one costs more trust than it ever built. Reliability is the point, not generosity.

Let the behaviour come before the framework. Values on a wall only hold if they describe what the business already does. Codify the culture you have, rather than the one you would like.

Let employees tell you which benefits matter. Regular surveys and weekly one-to-ones keep the perks list honest and point the spend at what people actually use.

When trust is broken, fix the guardrail, not the policy. A couple of people abusing a benefit is a design problem, not a reason to punish everyone. Understand why it happened, then adjust.