Does your company need a culture adjustment? No matter what type of business you run, company culture can impact how motivated your employees are and whether they stay around for the long haul. Negative attitudes can impact every aspect of your business. It is the leadership’s job to ensure everyone feels part of something bigger and recognized for their own achievements at the same time.
You might feel your company’s culture is ready for a redo, but you aren’t quite sure where to start or how to fix issues between employees, management and even between the company and clients. Fortunately, revamping things is straightforward.
Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-01-gartner-forecasts-39-percent-of-global-knowledge-workers-will-work-hybrid-by-the-end-of-2023
When and where people work has an impact. The number of remote workers continues to rise, encouraging the use of collaboration tools. Experts predict 20% of knowledge workers will be remote with around 51% fully remote in 2023.
How can you best promote a company culture no matter where your employees work?
1. Review Core Values
What does your brand stand for? Define your company’s core values and make sure they align with your mission and your vision for the local community where you live and work.
You can’t communicate core values until you’ve fully defined them. Once you have, make sure everyone is on board and understands how your words translate into real life day-to-day interactions.
Be consistent in sharing what they are so people are reminded in meetings, the company newsletter and throughout various forms of communication.
2. Create a Team Spirit
Make your workers feel as though they are a part of the journey as your business grows and changes. Put the core company message on a shirt and pass them out to everyone on the team to make them feel part of instituting the philosophies. The benefits of starting a brand apparel program include promoting brand awareness and boosting employee morale.
Make sure everyone has a voice in meetings. Gather questions beforehand for those who aren’t as outspoken and might get overlooked in a meeting. Ask different people to present each time. Use different presentation methods to engage different learning styles.
3. Improve Communication
Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-08-23-gartner-survey-reveals-44-percent-rise-in-workers-use-of-collaboration-tools-since-2019
In Gartner’s most recent survey of digital work experience, researchers found a 44% rise in use of collaboration tools. The figures looked at 2019 and 2021 to avoid any skewing from the 2020 pandemic numbers, when most people worked from home. Collaboration tools saw the biggest increase, but there were also increases in storage and sharing tools as well as real-time mobile messaging stats.
The best thing you can do is encourage open communication in your organization. Employees and management may occasionally have misunderstandings or disagreements. As long as everyone approaches the situations respectfully, people should feel free to express concerns and offer feedback. The best way to grow a positive company culture is to learn from your mistakes and fix issues along the way.
4. Reward Teamwork
Working as a team isn’t always easy. One person may have to wait on another to complete tasks. To foster a culture of collaboration, you must reward good teamwork.
Start by offering opportunities to work together. Recognize those who take leadership of a project as well as those who offer support. Encourage everyone to share what they know and tap into project management tools that allow people to add their thoughts and ideas without fear of speaking up or being too pushy.
Reward them as individuals and as a team. If you’ve ever worked on a group project, you know sometimes people don’t pull their weight. Understand that an excellent project might be mainly due to one person’s diligence and reward them quietly with a silent bonus or a day off. However, also reward the team as a whole.
5. Encourage Work/Life Balance
A work/life balance keeps employees healthy and avoids burnout. There are around 11.3 million open positions in the United States. The voluntary quit rate is around 25% than pre-pandemic. People are fed up with working their lives away and now realize life is too short to not enjoy family and friends and have time to pursue outside interests.
Some company cultures promote working long hours and not taking vacations. Such a recipe for disaster will burn out your top-performing employees and force them to look for another position outside your company.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/215643/average-weekly-working-hours-of-all-employees-in-the-us-by-month/
The average work week for April 2023 is 34.4 hours per week. While that might seem shorter than expected, factor in commuting time or hours workers don’t track when remote. Many studies show people can only focus a certain amount of time before losing it and becoming unproductive. Consider the best use of your employees’ time and if you should make your schedule four days instead of five. Each business model is different, but to prevent burnout you must get creative.
Set realistic goals and expectations and insist people take their paid time off. They’ll return more productive and with fresh ideas. Most importantly, they won’t become overwhelmed or exhausted and walk away from your company forever.
6. Invest in Employees
When people feel cared about, they’re more likely to care back. They’ll want to do their best for your company. Support their mental health by offering breaks and counseling options. Help with personal growth by paying for courses, sending them to conferences and offering work/life balance tips.
One mistake a lot of companies make is offering a program, such as a wellness program or bonuses and then taking it away. Workers will start looking for a company that still offers the things they need. They’ll feel unappreciated if you take things away and may even wonder about the health of your company and if their job is secure.
It’s Never Too Late to Change
Even if the company started on the wrong foot and wound up with a highly negative environment, it’s never too late to change things around. Spend time looking at what works now and in the past and rework the culture until it becomes what you want.
When your employees talk about you to their family and friends, what do they say? What do you want them to say? Start working today on making your brand the one you want. Let your workers know you care, you see them, you hear them and they are important to the life and growth of your company.
