No business should overlook the importance of building a healthy, passionate, and satisfied corporate culture. This can significantly influence the overall well-being of your employees, which in turn has a direct effect on the well-being, productivity, and profitability of your company.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the techniques that you can use to improve your company culture. Whilst the specifics will vary from one business to the next, much of the following advice is transferable.
What is Company Culture?
In this context, company culture is a collection of ideas, a dogma that defines a business’s identity. It governs the everyday workings, practices, and values of the business and informs how employees behave and are treated. It can be a tricky thing to identify within an existing business, but every business has a culture of its own. If you’re not steering the direction of this culture, it will develop on its own.
In recent years, tech giants like Facebook and Google have redefined the term ‘corporate culture’, offering an unprecedented level of perks and extras to appease their workers. Whilst you don’t necessarily have to go as far as these companies, their focus on corporate culture should tell you a thing or two about its importance.
Build and Nurture Your Community
A community is like a living organism, and there are things that it needs if it is to remain healthy. If you want your company culture to thrive, you’ll have to put the work in. A wealth of research indicates that happier employees are more productive.
Some of the central tenets of a healthy workforce include a sense of belonging and satisfaction. These may seem like broad terms, but there are specific ideas about how you can achieve these goals.
Creating a sense of belonging, for example, is related to teamwork, which can be facilitated by creating an environment where employees rely upon one another to complete tasks. Employees should have a clear idea of their role in the wider business, and they should know that they are the best person to carry out their specific tasks.
Facilitate Free Communication
Communication is key. Now, this might sound obvious or cliched, but it’s absolutely true. If your company doesn’t have the necessary communication channels established, then you’re effectively preparing to fail. When employees, managers, and clients communicate clearly and cooperate well with their peers, efficiency and productivity reach a peak.
Breaking down the barriers between employees is a key part of this, as is using modern project management tools and software to facilitate communications. Team leaders and managers should also strive to communicate in as timely and as clearly a fashion as possible. Smooth communications allow for a smooth workflow, enabling all teams to operate at full capacity.
Share Knowledge and Information
Knowledge, as we know, is power. One of the best things that you can do to encourage your company’s culture to flourish is to facilitate the sharing of information. This obviously ties in with supporting effective communications, but it specifically relates to sharing skills and insights that may benefit the team as a whole.
Between lectures, workshops, internships, and other schemes, there’s no shortage of opportunities to share your knowledge, and these should be seized. Every member of a team should always push themselves to learn more and acquire skills that may, at first glance, appear to be beyond their specific role. A culture that is keen to grow in this way is an intelligent, creative, and innovative one.
Trust
It’s important that members of your team feel respected, and trust is a key part of this. Try to let people work as independently as possible and have faith in their ability to complete their own individual tasks efficiently and competently.
This is all key to making each individual feel like a valued part of a team, which leads to a higher standard of work and often an increase in productivity and well-being. Allow your developers to have some autonomy and freedom by trusting in your hiring process – which should be a rigorous one – and letting them get on with things.
Consider Home Lives
For many people, work is a means to an end. It’s about supporting their family and building a steady home life. Keep this in mind, and don’t make unreasonably demanding requests of your employees. Of course, commitment, loyalty, and passion are important, but so is allowing them to spend time with their families.
An empathic approach can go a long way in this respect. Encouraging employees to spend more time with one another – such as whilst engaging in activities you may have organized for them – is an excellent way to build a sense of community.
Invest in Your Clients
Working to understand your clients is just as important as understanding your employees. Try to study the specific requirements and goals of each client company, and examine how they align with yours. You can show your commitment to your clients by making their problems your own and by showing that you’re on the same side.
Go the Extra Mile
As you can see, there are lots of ways to improve your employees’ work lives and home lives, and there’s space for you to get creative with this, too. Again, the specific requirements of each company will differ, but many of the values that underpin a healthy corporate culture are the same.
Many companies, such as the aforementioned tech giants or web development service providers, may opt for gimmicks and perks, but there’s a lot to be said for simply showing that you care about your workforce.