Company culture is a vital part of every business. It affects every aspect of a business. From attracting top talent to enhancing employee satisfaction, it’s the foundation of a thriving workforce. Without a positive company culture, many employees will find it challenging to see the real value in what they do, adversely affecting your bottom line.
Research shows that 94% of top management and 88% of employees believe positive company culture is crucial for success. The same study also found a strong relationship between workers who feel happy and valued at their workplace and those who feel their company has a positive culture.
There are reasons businesses named Best Places to Work are very successful. These companies have a strong and positive culture that makes their employees feel appreciated and ultimately perform their best. A report by CultureIQ shows that employees’ overall ratings of their workplace’s qualities (including environment, company values, and collaboration) are 20% higher at organizations that have a strong and positive culture.
Positive Company Culture
A positive workplace culture gives a company a competitive edge. Employees want to work for organizations with an excellent reputation from past and current employees. A business with a strong and positive culture attracts the talent that’s ready to make their next workplace a home instead of just a stepping stone.
Although every company is unique, organizations with happy employees have some things in common. Other benefits of creating a positive workplace culture include:
- Boost employee loyalty. Positive workplace culture promotes a sense of employee loyalty. That’s because employees are more likely to stay at their current job if they feel valued.
- Job satisfaction. It’s no secret that job satisfaction is higher in organizations that embrace a positive corporate culture. Companies that invest in the well-being of their workers are rewarded with happy and committed workers.
- Collaboration. Employees are more likely to work together in companies with a strong and positive culture. Positive workplace culture promotes teamwork, social interaction, and open communication—this collaboration results in incredible results.
- Work performance. Positive company cultures are associated with higher rates of efficiency. That’s because employees are more inspired and committed to employers who invest in their happiness and well-being.
- Employee morale. Encouraging a positive workplace culture is a sure way to improve employee morale. That’s because employees often feel happier and enjoy their jobs more when working in a positive environment.
- Reduced stress. Positive workplace cultures can reduce workplace stress significantly. Businesses with positive cultures have less stressed workers, boosting employee health and efficiency.
1. Space of Learning and Acceptance
As you monitor your employee’s performance, you should also help them perform better in their roles by establishing a culture of continuous learning in your company. There are many Learning Management Systems online that can help you create this culture.
Conduct one-on-one meetings with your team and give them feedback and suggestions to help them develop their skills and better themselves. Once employees get accustomed to a culture of continuous learning, they’re more likely to contribute to your company’s success. That’s because once employees can see they’re moving towards achieving their career goals, they’ll be more motivated and confident, and ultimately they’ll be more productive. So, ask your staff if they’d like to improve their skills or learn something new in a designated area. Also, inform your employees of the various job opportunities or different career paths within your organization to foster a learning environment.
2. Encourage Transparency
Transparency isn’t only good for your employees. A transparent workplace culture affects the entire company, resulting in highly engaged employees. According to the Bonusly report, a highly engaged employee is 2.1 times more likely to report working for a transparent company than actively disengaged workers.
Trust is the backbone of strong and positive company culture. However, if you want to create a transparent workplace culture, ensure your employees have collaboration and modern tools.
Outdated communication tools can be a significant roadblock to transparency, especially if your employees work remotely and across different offices. Therefore, your team must have an easy and effective way to connect and share vital information.
Besides using up-to-date collaboration and communication tools, another critical way to encourage transparency and ultimately promote a positive workplace culture is defaulting to transparency. This essentially is a mental, not a logistical shift. So, rather than asking, “is it vital to share this?” ask, “is it essential to hide this information?”
To embody transparency at your company:
- Share successes. Openly share and recognize the success of your employees, your team members, and your company with everyone. It’s a significant motivation boost for employees to hear positive results from their hard work.
- Share challenges. You hired the best talent for a reason. So, by sharing the challenges you and your business are facing, you’ll create opportunities for your employees to come up with solutions together. Several minds are more powerful than one in solving complex challenges.
3. Creating Company Values
Creating a sense of purpose among your staff is a fundamental ingredient for any successful business. Building a purpose-driven workplace culture starts with a set of company values that reflect your company’s long-term goals. For organizations with effective, purpose-driven cultures, the organization’s core values are much more than mission statements. However, a company’s goals and mission should inform its core values, and they’re the principles at the heart of every successful business. These company values must be woven into every one of your business’s actions. Company values are vital because they’ll give your staff a clear reason for their work and uplift the entire company.
However, if you want your company culture to stick, you’ll need to develop genuine company values and stay true to them.
4. Encourage strong Coworker Relationships
Solid relationships at work improve employee engagement, but this doesn’t happen overnight. Building strong employee relationships takes time and dedicated team-building activities.
Creating an environment that encourages and generates collisions can also help you build strong employee relationships. For instance, face-to-face interactions are the most vital activities in a workplace because they create collisions that lead to unplanned interactions and chance encounters between employees, both inside and outside a company, improving performance and efficiency.
To foster strong coworker relationships, you must also think of physical and cultural environments in your business. For instance, think of where your employees eat lunch. Eating lunch together is one of the easiest ways to know your coworkers, especially if you’re on teams that rarely interact, and it’s an easy and cost-effective way to cultivate solid coworker relationships. Having an employee birthday recognition program in place is another great way to foster camaraderie and boost morale within the team.
5. Embrace and Encourage Employee Autonomy
Jay Nathan says, “[Good leaders]… don’t settle for a shallow view of their value to the business.”
Many employees don’t like to be micromanaged at their workplaces. Micromanaging is ineffective and does little to cultivate trust in your organization’s culture. You hired the best talent, so you must trust them to perform their duties effectively.
There are a few ways you can embrace employee autonomy and ultimately encourage a positive workplace culture, including allowing your staff to exercise choice, reining in overzealous managers and workers, and encouraging decision-making opportunities.
Embracing employee autonomy will enable your team to make sometimes but typically rewarding decisions, and they’ll make the incredible leap from being held accountable for their duties to embracing accountability as they own their responsibilities.
Positive company culture is a work in progress, growing in tandem with your business and your team. It’s up to you to determine where to start change, and which of these strategies to adopt first.
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