Company culture refers to the everyday experience of an organization, including their vision and values and how these manifest themselves within the workplace. Furthermore, company culture encompasses how employees and leaders interact as well as its hierarchy structure.
Establishing a positive work culture is vital for employee retention and performance. Here are a few ways your company can ensure it operates with a healthy culture:
1. Hire the Right People
Hiring and employee retention have a direct influence on company culture. Employees who feel satisfied in their jobs and working in an ideal working environment are more likely to remain part of your team, spreading word of your business throughout their networks.
An ideal workplace culture occurs when everyone understands the overall goals and reasons behind them, with an established sense of trust between employees and management regardless of hierarchy structures. Leaders need to remain consistent, open to feedback, and show gratitude towards their team members in order to foster this kind of environment.
Hiring for fit over function is also key to developing a thriving company culture. Make sure your hiring process reflects this goal, allowing candidates to familiarize themselves with your day-to-day office environment before making their decision on applying or not. When conducting interviews, ask questions designed to identify how their values align with those of the company culture as a whole and if they would make good additions.
Last but not least, you can foster a positive company culture by encouraging current team members to spread the positive news of working with you by sharing their positive experience in the community with others. This helps build an invaluable referral network that will attract new talent while keeping current team members satisfied and loyal.
Establishing a healthy culture takes work and time, but the rewards can be enormously worthwhile. A well-kept work environment leads to increased productivity, morale and eventually business expansion – not forgetting employee productivity and success which depend on having an inviting workplace environment for them to spend most of their days at.
2. Create a Safe Space
Employees may feel afraid to express themselves freely at work due to how others will react; therefore, healthy company cultures thrive when workers feel safe sharing their ideas and emotions in the workplace. But leaders need to do more than provide a secure work environment; they must actively ensure psychological safety for their teams.
Emotional safety refers to the sense that all team members feel supported and valued for who they are, even during times of hardship. When teams feel safe enough with one another to discuss issues constructively and collaboratively, innovative problem solving becomes possible more readily.
To create a healthy company culture, leaders should critically examine their own behavior and communication skills. A great way to kick-start this process is hosting a Management 3.0 workshop; such workshops offer proven techniques for effective leadership as well as increasing employee engagement.
Maintaining a positive company culture requires hard work from all members of an organization, but the investment pays dividends: happier employees will drive greater productivity for business success.
One effective way of creating a safe space for your employees is encouraging them to express themselves freely during crisis situations and openly discuss their emotions, such as using an anonymous hotline. You can do this by giving employees access to resources they need in order to do this effectively.
3. Encourage Teamwork
Teamwork is essential to building a thriving work culture and it plays a crucial role in both in-person and remote teams’ success.
Teamwork can increase productivity by improving efficiency and decreasing project delays, while increasing morale and job satisfaction. But for teamwork to be truly effective, all employees must feel safe sharing ideas and offering feedback.
Companies seeking to promote collaboration and teamwork among their employees must foster an atmosphere that supports teamwork by creating an open and safe work space. Employers can utilize cultural interviews or other assessment methods during the hiring process in order to assess candidates and ensure they will fit well with the company culture.
Companies should create and communicate a clear picture of their workplace culture to employees regularly, including explaining its values and goals as well as how these reflect in daily business operations. Employees should gain an understanding of this grander vision so they can align personal with professional goals more easily.
Encourage your team members to become active listeners. There will always be give and take on teams, but if one person dominates all conversations without listening or sharing their thoughts during meetings or outside them (through apps such as Blink or open door hours), one could find themselves discontent in their role. By encouraging your members to share their opinions during meetings or beyond (via an app like Blink or open-door hours), balance can be restored for a healthier work culture that produces productive and profitable outcomes.
As part of your strategy to empower employees, give your team members the autonomy they need to make decisions independently. When employees don’t feel that they have control of their work decisions, resentful employees often develop. One way you could facilitate this is through Slack or MS Teams channels dedicated to celebrating success, having cross-departmental coffee chats or theme days hosted with virtual happy hours for team members or virtual happy hours hosted online.
4. Encourage Feedback
As part of your efforts to foster a healthy company culture, one key way you can do so is by prioritizing feedback. This might involve including it into employee review processes or simply organizing weekly meetings where employees are given an opportunity to provide their input on work done during the past week.
Make sure that all members of your team understand the value and effectiveness of feedback through training – either company-wide presentations or workshops with teams – or by emphasizing its normality within workplace environments. Remind them to feel free to seek feedback from others as part of everyday office life.
Encouraged feedback in the workplace can promote a positive company culture by developing what psychologist Carol Dweck refers to as a growth mindset. According to this theory, individuals who embrace challenges as opportunities for personal and professional development tend to respond better when faced with obstacles, leading them to seek feedback and learn from mistakes more readily. It can help boost productivity in organizations by motivating staff to seek feedback and learn from errors more readily.
Encouraged team members to seek feedback from both peers and managers will become more open to giving it themselves. This can be an invaluable asset in cultivating a healthy company culture as it will foster honest dialogue at work without fear of reprisals for speaking up; to make this work, however, ensure you establish and communicate an anti-retaliation policy to your team members as soon as possible.
5. Recognize Success
A healthy company culture promotes employee health and productivity while making employees feel invested in your company’s success. But creating one doesn’t happen overnight – it takes hard work and commitment from all involved if it is to succeed.
As the cornerstone of a healthy company culture, consistently communicating your values should be the first step. You can do this through employee orientations, weekly meetings, sales collateral or internal newsletters; just make sure they reach everyone involved! Once in awhile it’s a good idea to take stock and evaluate if anything needs updating with regards to how your values are communicated and updated accordingly.
Recognizing successes is another great way to promote a healthy company culture, whether through simple verbal acknowledgements or tangible rewards like pizza lunches. You could even set up an acknowledgement channel within your communications or host regular events to recognize team member achievements.
Finally, it’s essential that leaders of your company embrace your culture. Leaders set the tone for an entire organization; if your leaders do not live your values it sends a signal that they do not care for team members. Empathetic leadership allows teams to overcome stressors more efficiently and achieve greater success.
Communication, connection and celebration are essential ingredients of a thriving company culture. There are numerous methods you can employ to foster these three aspects; the sooner they begin being put in place the better! You could also look for resources and tools that help streamline communication, encourage connections and highlight celebration – like Burnalong with its full service team willing to answer all of your queries on this journey towards building healthy company cultures!