Building and maintaining a positive company culture benefits your company in many ways. A company with a healthy culture improves employee satisfaction, fosters employee retention, builds a positive reputation, and boosts productivity.
When employees feel safe in a work environment and free to discuss openly and honestly, it in turn fosters innovation and creativity.
Additionally, when employees feel satisfied in their work and managers acknowledge the individual efforts of team members, absenteeism and turnover are more likely to reduce. If you’re interested in reaping the many benefits of positive company culture, work on the following areas.
Promote Diversity and Inclusivity
Whether you work in an office setting or a restaurant, diversity and inclusion begin with recruiting, and recruiting and hiring statistics show this benefits your company as a whole. Having a diverse pool of employees fosters creativity and innovation because each member brings something different to the table.
A range of skills and knowledge leads to better collaboration and problem-solving because everyone feels they are a valued member of the team. When employees feel included in the workplace, they are more likely to engage and commit to the work they do at your company, improving employee satisfaction and reducing turnover.
Not only do diversity and inclusivity improve your company internally, but by showing that your company values each member of the team, your company builds a positive reputation. This makes you more attractive to customers, and job seekers as well, helping you further build a team of people who work well together.
Encourage Employee Wellness
Employee wellness means investing in your employee’s mental, physical, emotional, and financial health. Employee wellness programs can include a gym membership stipend, memberships to wellness programs and apps, or even travel bonuses to pay for their commute to work. However your company invests in employee wellness, it’s clear they benefit company culture overall.
A company that values the health and wellness of its employees works wonders in improving employee morale. Employees who feel their needs are being met are more likely to be motivated, more engaged in their work, and committed to the company’s mission.
Employee wellness programs also may improve overall productivity because your employees are healthy, less stressed, and well-rested. Investing in their health may even lead to fewer sick days and fewer distractions in the workplace. And because you’re supporting their overall health, this in turn may even reduce healthcare costs for your company.
While diversity and inclusions offer improved collaboration, employee wellness also benefits team dynamics. Supporting your employees encourages team members to support each other.
Accentuate Positivity
Positivity in the workplace means implementation within work relationships, overall workload, mutual appreciation, gratitude toward members of the team, and anywhere optimism can improve the culture within your workplace. When employees are met with positivity from team members, managers, and executive-level staff, it goes a long way in engaging them and increasing overall morale.
Consistent positivity also improves communication as a whole because it facilitates open and honest communication. When employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, misunderstandings are prevented and stronger relationships between employees are built.
In addition to the above-mentioned points about employee wellness, a positive culture helps reduce the stress levels of your employees, benefiting their physical and mental health, while improving job satisfaction. Employees that are happy to come to work instead of fearful can better perform the duties of their role and offer better customer service where you have client-facing interactions.
Implement Core Values
Core values are essential to improving and maintaining a positive company culture. Core values serve to guide team members and represent the identity of your business. Core values provide a clear direction for your company and its employees and set the tone of your organization’s culture.
Core values act as guidance on how to act and make decisions, from everyday internal communication to making important decisions for your business, core values should reflect in every part of your business.
By thoroughly implementing core values across your organization, your business is more attractive to future employees who align with your ideology. Core values need to be implemented from the very beginning of the hiring process to your employee training materials, and the everyday work of your different departments.
Core values should be consistent and provide a framework for your employees to abide by. By maintaining consistency, you encourage accountability within your organization. Core values that promote respect, integrity, and teamwork help foster a positive work environment and culture.
Provide Clear (and realistic) expectations
Providing clear but realistic expectations for your different departments and individual employees can benefit your company culture in several ways. By reducing ambiguity, you provide team members with the expectations of their roles, responsibilities, and goals for their own development and the development of the company. By reducing confusion about what is expected you instill better communication internally.
The clear expectations you provide also assist in holding team members and departments accountable for their performance. When employees know what they’re responsible for, they’re more likely to take ownership of their work and strive to meet and exceed expectations.
In addition to clear expectations, you should have a strategy for measuring performance. A clear methodology for evaluating performance should also be shared with employees so they know how their performance is measured. Transparency on employee expectations and areas for improvement, while still highlighting successes, helps employees be motivated to improve their performance.
Clear expectations also may help to reduce stress in the workplace because of a clear understanding of who is expected of what. When employees know exactly what they need to do, they can focus on their work without worrying about what to prioritize and what they’re responsible for.
Through clear and realistic expectations, you foster a positive culture by creating a sense of trust and respect between employees and managers.
It’s clear that positive company culture is about more than just telling your employees they’re doing a good job, but also defining expectations, encouraging wellness outside of work, and implementing diversity and inclusion within every part of your business.
By ensuring each member does their part in promoting a positive culture, from your recruiting team, employees, and managers, your business can grow and improve.
