What is a ‘company culture’? Company culture can be defined as a set of shared goals that characterize an organization. It describes the way people in an organisation work and what values they believe in, where the company is headed and what they are doing to get there. Company culture also encompasses a variety of elements that includes the work environment, leadership style and ethics.
How does it work? It can be deliberately expressed or cultivated through the results made over time by employees that understand the outcomes and the nature of strong company culture. Most companies do have a team-based culture that emphasizes participation while others have formal, traditional and hierarchical management. If you work at a company who values traditional management, your job responsibilities are much more defined, however, there may not be opportunities to advance without going through a formal promotion. Whereas at a casual workplace, employees often have the opportunities to take new projects as time permits.
Company culture is important to employees because they are more likely to enjoy their work when their needs and values are being met. Furthermore, if you work at a company with good company culture, you tend to develop better relationships with your coworkers and be more productive outside of work together. If you work at a company that does not embrace company culture, you are less likely to take pleasure in your work. Company culture is also important to employers because workers who fit in with the company are likely to not only be happier but more productive; they are also likely to stay with that company for longer which reduces the turnaround and associated costs of training new hires. So how can you make sure that your company culture grows and scales as it can be hard to maintain? Fret not! You may be able to maintain a good company culture if you:
- Be Punctual to Meetings
There is no substitute for hard work and everyone will always look up to their leaders for example. However, employees should know that no matter how hard they work; they should always be punctual or earlier the better.
2. Show Transparency & Trust
Make sure you find ways to measure how transparency flows within your organization! Whether it is through your leadership interactions or employee feedback; leaders should be able to connect with employees and to their culture.
3. Have an Out-of-Office Team Building
A strong work culture requires everyone to be connected. Ways to help build the strength of your team includes after-work activities such as dinners, or even weekend productivity. Moreover, having activities that would help create a team of competitors would also help strengthen the bond as employees would work well together and create synergy.
4. Create Core Values
Define your company’s core values as it’s important for your employees to reiterate them constantly rather than just filing it away. In addition, by creating these core values it would make employees and leaders work well together in a harmonious way.
5. Get to Know Your Employees
By making yourself accessible to your employees you will help keep the company culture strong. Although it’s hard to maintain personal relationships with a large group of people, you can at least commit to remembering their first names. Show genuine interest and active listening and you’ll have a respectful and positive company culture.
As a business grows, the culture inevitably changes constantly. In order to keep up with the changing of personalities, employees should be involved in what culture would be. Employees nowadays have become very interested in ‘lifestyle benefits’ that would best respond to their circumstances and aid a healthier work and life balance. A poor workplace culture could cost the employer money and could result in employee stress, poor health and absenteeism. Therefore, working hard to achieve a good culture is not only beneficial for the employees, it is also good for productivity for your business. Employees are the core of any business so make sure they know that they are valued – A great workplace needs support from all team members but in particular from those at management level. Clear and committed leadership will be a crucial tool in maintaining great company culture. Make sure you as a leader understand the culture and achieving it effectively by communicating and upholding values.