As businesses grow and evolve, it is crucial to maintain a positive employee culture. A vibrant and engaging company culture helps retain talented employees, fosters teamwork, and increases overall job satisfaction. Unfortunately, many companies struggle with creating a productive and healthy work environment. In fact, figures suggest that one in nine US employees feel their workplace culture is toxic, with Millennials and Gen X being the most likely age groups to call this behavior out.
A toxic working environment is also the main reason people leave their jobs, including over pay. With working conditions becoming more critical, how can employees ensure they provide a safe, healthy, and positive experience each day?
Define and Communicate Your Company Values Clearly
The foundation of a positive workplace culture is anchored on clearly defined company values that resonate with employees. To achieve this, companies must be concise and straightforward in communicating their core values to their employees. It can start by weaving them into job descriptions or company mission statements. One way to bring values to life is to create a “culture deck, ” like Netflix’s slideshow, visually representing the company’s values. This way, everyone will know exactly what you expect and how they are expected to act and perform to meet these standards.
Have A Good HR Department
In many companies, the HR department is often seen as the middleman between employees and management. Constantly working in conjunction with management to enforce rules or push agendas. However, this can be changed by ensuring that your HR department remains focused on supporting employees and working together to create a cohesive and positive working environment. This can reduce friction in the workplace and give employees a safe space to air their concerns.
Recognize and Reward Valuable Contributions
Employee recognition is vital to creating a great workplace culture. Ensuring employees feel valued and appreciated for their contributions is one of the best ways to keep them engaged and motivated. To achieve this, companies should implement recognition and reward programs that are fair and equitable. These programs should acknowledge exceptional performance or effort and encourage employees to nominate each other for recognition. When employees recognize their hard work, it gives them a sense of pride and fulfillment. In addition, publicly sharing individual successes can also serve as an excellent motivator for other employees to strive for excellence. Acting on employee feedback and offering opportunities for career advancement can also be effective ways to reinforce a culture of recognition and reward. Employees who feel their contributions matter are more likely to invest in the company’s success.
Provide Opportunities for Career Advancement
In addition to fostering a culture of continuous growth, providing opportunities for career advancement is another crucial factor in improving employee engagement. Companies that invest in their employees by offering training, development programs, and paths for growth tend to have higher retention rates and overall job satisfaction.
If people feel like their work isn’t valued or the company has no interest in furthering their skills, they will look elsewhere for job satisfaction and a career they can progress in.
Allowing employees to move through the ranks or expand their skills and undergo regular training can help them build a future with you and be confident you are doing everything to meet their needs during their employment.
Conduct Employee Surveys to Improve Company Culture
Employee surveys are a helpful tool that organizations can use to understand their employees’ perceptions of the work environment. By asking the right questions, companies can uncover insights that help to improve processes and strategies.
These surveys help identify areas where improvements need to be made, including areas related to communication, recognition, career advancement, and flexibility. After all, if you don’t ask employees what you are doing well or where you can improve, you won’t know their issues or what is affecting their ability to work correctly.
Once you have this feedback, you need to act on it. It is pointless collating the information and then pushing it to one side. Read it, plan for your next steps, and implement it.
Be Flexible with Your Employees
Allowing flexible work hours or remote work options can lead to a happier and more productive workforce. It shows trust and respect for their personal lives and responsibilities. Those who control their work schedules are often more engaged and satisfied with their jobs. This flexibility can also increase employee retention and attract new talent to the company. Importantly, being flexible does not have to come at the expense of team collaboration. In fact, a well-designed flexible work program can promote a stronger sense of teamwork and company culture. By offering personalized work arrangements, companies can ensure employees feel valued, respected, and motivated to perform at their best.
Go Automated
This might not sound like it can benefit employees, but having systems automated to ensure employees can do their work is vital. From having an effective clocking in and out procedure to avoid taking hours manually and underpaying to using a payroll hours calculator to ensure pay is correct for hours worked, you can put measures in place to ensure employee satisfaction and ensure nothing is missed.
Cutting out mundane tasks can allow employees to focus on the job at hand with reduced distractions and a lighter workload. They will benefit from the improvement by streamlining what they need to do physically during the workday and making life easier.
Other great automation options include;
- To collect and analyze data
- To filter customer service calls to the right person
- Shutting down software or devices at the end of the working day to discourage long hours
- Organise files for customers to ensure everything is together when needed
Encourage Collaboration and Group Cohesiveness
To improve employee culture, it’s important to encourage collaboration and group cohesiveness. This can be achieved by creating an environment that cultivates openness, transparency, and creativity. Establishing a mission for group cohesion strategies and building trust is crucial to promoting collaboration. Additionally, finding ways for employees to see themselves as part of a larger collective rather than just as sole contributors can help foster team cohesion. When employees feel comfortable and satisfied in their work environment and understand how their individual contributions fit into the bigger picture, they are more likely to work together towards shared goals.
However, allowing employees to develop independently is vital, and looking at what they can bring to the table is critical. So you need to find the sweet spot between collaboration and independence not to drown out essential ideas or suggestions and allow people the right amount of space they need to make collaboration work well. To do this well, you need to assess the personalities in your team and play to their strengths. Even more so when you have more introverted team members, as extroverts can sometimes overshadow them.
Empower Employees with Clear Feedback and Accountability
Empowering employees with clear feedback and accountability is vital to fostering a positive employee culture. This means providing frequent, honest feedback and setting clear expectations for employees while holding them accountable for their actions. Encouraging problem-solving and goal-setting together as a team promotes a sense of ownership and responsibility among employees. This helps create a productive workforce and helps employees feel more motivated and satisfied in their work.
There are many different parts that go into building a positive workplace culture. And as you might have guessed, the heart of it is the employees. You cannot create a better culture without them. Seeing your employees as integral cogs in the business you rely upon instead of people you pay to work for you can enlighten employers on how they can become better people to work for and ensure the workplace is one people enjoy coming to. Not only this, but a positive workplace culture can have a knock-on effect on other areas, including improved business relationships, higher customer retention, and a better business reputation.
