CASE STUDY – TRISTAN WHITE, THE PHYSIO CO
Extract from Claire Harrison’s book, The CEO Secret Guide to Managing and Motivating Employees.
Overview
In 2004, The Physio Co was a single person with a vision to change seniors’ healthcare forever. In 2015, The Physio Co, with more than 100 team members and 250,000 physiotherapy consultations per year, has been named one of Australia’s Best Places to Work. The Physio Co helps seniors stay mobile, safe and happy, connecting hundreds of thousands of them with better physiotherapy services. Bringing together a team of talented and caring healthcare professionals, The Physio Co was born to fill a niche and provide a service, and, for more than a decade, it’s done just that.
Founder and CEO, Tristan White is a qualified physiotherapist and is passionate about sharing what he has learned to help others grow as individuals and professionals. Tristan writes a blog, Culture is Everything, which was listed as one of SmartCompany’s Australia’s 25 Best Business Blogs. Tristan started The Physio Co because he wanted to help ageing people.
Strategies
- Systemises culture by ensuring there is a rhythm to communication, cultural reviews, reward and recognition, and parties and celebrations, which enables continued business growth while not compromising their award-winning workplace culture
- Encourages an all-inclusive culture that moves in both directions: from the top down (starting with the CEO) and from the bottom up
- Strives to live the core values at all times to ensure that the culture is consistently excellent (trying to live one way at work and another way outside of work leads to exhausting and unnecessary internal conflict)
- Demonstrates gratitude and appreciativeness whether times are good or bad (this elicits tremendous loyalty from employees)
- Tries to make culture sustainable in every way
Realised benefits
- Significant year-on-year growth
- An excellent and cohesive team that delivers outstanding service to customers
- Growth from one to one-hundred employees inside of a decade
- More than 250,000 consultations last year
- Recognised by BRW as one of Australia’s Best Places to Work
Tristan White’s tips
“You have to really believe that your people are the strongest part of your business.”
“You can’t turn culture on and off. Culture is how you do things every day of your working life, and hopefully it carries over into your personal life as well.”
“Culture starts from the top down and from the bottom up. It really is an all-inclusive concept, but it has to start from the CEO. There’s no question that if they don’t own it and really live the core values every moment of their lives, it’s not going to work out the way that they’d like it to.”
Listen to Claire’s full interview with Tristan on the Best Workplace CEOs with Claire Harrison podcast on iTunes.
Claire Harrison is the Founder and Managing Director of Harrisons, a flourishing HR consulting business that sprouted in 2009 from Claire’s passionate belief that inspiring leaders and superstar employees are the key success factor to any business. With over 20 years’ experience, Claire has worked as a HR Director of multi-national organisations, as a Non-Executive Board Director, and a small business owner. Claire’s corporate career includes working with companies such as BHP, Westpac, Fonterra and Mayne Nickless.
