By Grandy & Associates
The success and endurance of your business is highly influenced by its culture. The culture is determined by the practices, values and expectations of the entire organization. Culture is your organizations overall character.
A healthy organization culture represents its desire to create, establish and encourage a positive environment. Culture is developed through its actions and behaviors, not its marketing and policies. You can observe a company’s culture when its leadership is challenged with a crisis, how the company responds to a change in its business environment, and how the team is praised and/or disciplined.
Culture is one of the major advantages when hiring and attracting new talent for your organization. Most workers consider a company’s culture before applying, and almost half of employees would leave their current roles for a lower-paying opportunity at an organization with a better culture. The culture of an organization is also one of the top indicators of employee satisfaction and one of the reasons that almost two-thirds of employees stay in their job.
If a potential employee’s point of view doesn’t match your company culture, internal struggles are likely to be the result. Organizations should hire for culture, and support it during the hiring process and onboarding. Practices and expectations must be taught and values should be communicated.
In the hiring process, ask questions focused on cultural fit, like what matters to the them and why they are attracted to working at your company. These questions shouldn’t be the only determining factor when evaluating a candidate. Organizations must keep an open mind to different views that may keep their culture inviting and current.
Your employees, just like your customers, expect tailored experiences so you need to focus on ways to help each team member identify with your culture. Once you start treating your employees with the same care you treat your customers, a culture that inspires each employee within your organization is sure to develop.
Building a workplace culture that can handle challenges requires establishing strong connections between team members. Encouraging collaboration and engaging in team building activities, even when working remotely, are ways to bring your team together and promote communication.
Encourage shared personal interests between team members. This can create new pathways for understanding and empathy that are essential to improving communication, creativity, and even conflict resolution.
Recognizing the contributions of all team members has a far-reaching, positive effect on organizational culture. When everyone on the team recognizes the accomplishments of others, individuals start to see how they’re part of a whole. Employees want to know their work matters and they notice when they aren’t appreciated by superiors. When an organization makes appreciating employees’ part of its culture, employee engagement, retention, and productivity improve.
Making recognition part of your culture means it must be a regular occurrence, not something that is only reserved for major achievements or work anniversaries. Encourage team members to practice frequent social recognition, in addition to monetary recognition. Providing social recognition on a consistent basis has a remarkable business impact. Companies that invest in social recognition increase the odds to improve individual performances.
Your company’s success in building a strong workplace culture rests in the hands of team leaders and managers. Your leadership team can help build the culture you need by prioritizing it in every aspect of their work lives. They need to openly and clearly discuss the organization’s culture and values, and they should also be prepared to include feedback from employees into their cultural advocacy efforts. Leaders need their employees’ perspective on culture. When employees see leaders living your culture, they’ll follow suit.
Great workplace cultures are developed by employees who are continually learning and companies that invest in staff development. Training initiatives, coaching, and providing employees with new responsibilities are all great ways to show your team that you’re invested in their success.
A culture of learning has a significant business impact on both, the business and employees.
Ultimately, leadership needs to take center stage in your recognition efforts, as they’re the cultural trendsetters for your entire company. As leaders, your actions and efforts are being evaluated, assessed and will impact your culture. Include recognition training and implementation into your leadership and share ideas and processes with managers on how to recognize others and why it matters.
Your culture needs to align with your organization so they feel valued, supported and comfortable. Companies that acknowledge the significance of its culture time and again, endure the difficult times and challenges and even emerge healthier and stronger.
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