Regardless of your business’s industry, the company’s culture can play a significant role in its success, which often shapes the organization’s mission, goals, and values. So, where do you start when you are ready to establish or improve your company’s culture?
While there is not a one-size-fits-all strategy that works for all companies, you can use some methods to improve your organization in the short- and long-term time horizon.
Strategies for Improving Your Company’s Culture
There are many ways to improve your company’s culture. For instance, you could consider using some, or even all, of these methods, including:
- Embracing transparency
- Recognizing and rewarding valuable employee contributions
- Cultivating strong coworker relationships
- Embracing and inspiring employee autonomy
- Practicing flexibility
- Communicating purpose and passion
- Promoting a team atmosphere
- Giving and soliciting feedback regularly
- Remaining true to your company’s core values
- Giving ample effort to building culture in the company
Embracing Transparency
Transparent company culture can produce highly engaged employees and promote positivity throughout the organization. Transparency refers to doing things openly, without any secrets. This, in turn, can make for a more trusting environment.
Some ways to embrace organizational transparency include ensuring you have updated communication tools. You could also share the challenges and successes with individuals and teams within the company.
Recognizing and Rewarding Valuable Employee Contributions
Companies that emphasize recognition for a job well done will typically endure less turnover in their workforce, which can help reduce the cost of regularly training newly hired individuals. In this case, it can help if you identify and align specific behaviors – and results – with your company’s values and goals and then recognize those who act in this manner. This recognition can come from top management and the individuals’ coworkers.
Cultivating Strong Coworker Relationships
Fostering relationships can drive employee engagement. Therefore, it is beneficial to devote time to team-building activities, including employee challenges that can strengthen relationships.
Other ways to encourage employee relationship building include having a cafeteria or dedicated break room where coworkers can converse about business and non-business-related situations.
Embracing and Inspiring Employee Autonomy
Micromanaging employees can make them uncomfortable and unmotivated. Therefore, to build a more robust company culture, you need to trust your employees to manage their various responsibilities effectively.
Some of the ways to do so include the following:
- Letting employees exercise choice
- Not having set working hours (as long as employees get their jobs done on time)
- Creating decision-making opportunities for employees and teams
- Establishing autonomy
- Ensuring that no bullying takes place by management or employees
Practicing Flexibility
Providing employees with flexibility can also help improve their morale and reduce turnover at the organization. There are many ways that you can implement flexibility, such as:
- Allowing employees to leave during the day to spend time with their children at various events (such as attending a school play or sporting event)
- Letting individuals work from home or another remote location
- Not enforcing a formal dress code in the office
Communicating Purpose and Passion
Studies have shown that people need meaningful work that gives them a purpose. When individuals believe their work matters, they are more likely to remain engaged. They may also be more motivated to get their job done.
Recognizing your employees for the impact they have made is an excellent place to start when you want to communicate purpose and passion. This can also tie into improving your company’s culture.
Promoting a Team Atmosphere
Promoting a team atmosphere can help to get your employees out of their individual silos and instead have them all (or groups of them) working together to accomplish the same goal(s). Doing so can make a big difference in the results.
Giving and Soliciting Feedback Regularly
Giving and receiving feedback can be difficult. However, it is a necessary component of promoting company culture. Therefore, management should provide feedback to employees regularly. There are many ways to accomplish this, such as sending out employee surveys and allowing individuals to submit questions or concerns anonymously.
Remaining True to Your Company’s Core Values
Your company’s core values can drive its mission and goals. In many ways, these are the principles at the organization’s heart. Therefore, you have to stay true to these values if you want to promote good company culture.
Giving Ample Efforts to Building Culture in the Company
Building your company’s culture can take time and effort. A big part of establishing and maintaining a company culture is ensuring that it aligns with the organization’s values and mission.
With that in mind, you must devote time to nurturing and exemplifying these values in many different ways so that your employees can better recognize and emulate them. It is also important to note that a well-established organizational culture is not a static event. Rather, it is an ongoing work in progress.
Does Your Company Promote and Value Its Culture?
While company culture can be a somewhat nebulous concept, many professionals agree that it includes a shared set of business goals, values, attitudes, and practices that make up an organization.
Do your employees feel good about the work they are doing – and are they regularly recognized for it? If not, it may be time to dive deeper into promoting programs that improve the overall work environment, which can make for happier workers, reduce turnover, and produce incredible results.
