5 Ways to Get Your Company Culture to Thrive

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At the heart of every successful business you’ll find a thriving organizational culture. Within these businesses is an environment where hard-working people combine their passion and intensity to produce great results. A strong company culture can be challenging to achieve and maintain but if you get it right you’ll have a unique and sustainable competitive advantage.

Key Takeaways:

• Motivating and engaging employees can help boost their job satisfaction and promotes a higher level of engagement from them.

• Try to establish trust with your employees and evaluate the relationships that you have with them.

• Don’t let your company culture define you, you can always build and grow it to be something better.

5 Ways to Get Your Company Culture to Thrive

1. Determine your core values. Many businesses establish a set of values and these form somewhat of a personality for the organization.

   For some businesses, their core values may be sitting on the wall or on their website but they may not be embedded within the culture where they could be flowing through every aspect of the business both on-site and off-site. Employees enjoy striving for the organization’s values and even more so when those values align with their own.

   Values are often encapsulated in words such as honesty, integrity, commitment and responsibility but it is also worth considering how your values are present in each and every aspect of the business. Values that fit in well can be lived and breathed by staff, sustaining the desired company image and perception.

2. Motivate and engage every employee. What can we do as leaders to help facilitate positive emotional and motivational experiences for our staff which then promotes higher levels of engagement?

   If a person was asked to run 20km for no reason they would most likely decline. If a person was told that their significant other is 20km away and in need of urgent medicine, and if this person was given the medicine but had no means of transport, it is almost certain that they would run the 20km.

   Research conducted by Genos International has indicated that employee engagement is really driven by motivation which is strongly linked to emotions – like love, admiration and also fun. Genos state that emotions and the way we feel will impact on our decisions, behavior and our performance. To motivate and engage employees it is essential to understand them.

   People care if you take a genuine interest in their future. Managers should take the time to regularly sit down with employees and get to know them and to gain insight into what makes each of them tick – their dreams, desires and goals – and align these with the business goals where possible. By promoting engagement and understanding your employees, this effort will result in lower turnover, higher retention and a ‘happier’ workplace.

3. Look at where the trust is. It can be an interesting exercise to analyze your business and look at where the trust is – in staff relationships, in suppliers, in systems – and to make these areas and connections as good as they can be. When a system is interdependent and there is full trust, all parts of the organization can rely on all other parts and there can be harmonious and flowing productivity throughout.

   Managers should look to nurture good relationships with employees and create situations, such as team bonding activities, to further promote good relationships based on trust.

4. Ensure open communication. Are you able to have an open and honest relationship with all your employees? Has a comfortable environment been created in which staff can constructively criticize and praise each other? A strong company culture thrives with open and free-flowing communication between all staff.

   People in organizations should be able to have meaningful and respectful conversations without the feeling that anyone will be victimized. An open door policy is a positive approach and it can still have its boundaries to enable an optimal flow of communications.

   The inside and outside of companies are often reflections of each other so the outside image of a business is often strongly tied to the culture within. A business can take steps such as further embedding their values within all aspects of the business, understanding all employees and promoting an environment of trust and open communication. Once a business is operating on this type of basis, the culture will organically thrive and management can then create more opportunities to maintain and promote the organizational culture.

5. Don’t let your culture define you. Setting your company culture early is easier than waiting and needing to change it later when your group is larger. Culture is like a garden. If you let it go, individual flowers and weeds that you never expected to be there will sprout and grow, some taking root and becoming difficult to remove.

   It is vital that you take proactive measures to define your culture as soon as possible in order to cement the way you want things done within your team or business.

Company Culture FAQ

1. How do you improve company culture?

   To your company culture you need to build and establish trust, create a community, and invest in your employees. Investing in your employees and their success in the company is a great way for them to be more productive and happier. This helps build and establish their trust and create a positive community.

2. What is company culture?

   Company culture is a shared set of values, goals, and attitudes that help make up an organization. The characteristics of a company are from how the employees interact and how they respond to change. This environment will often dictate the quality of the employees professional life.

3. Why is company culture important?

   Company culture is important because it helps drive an employees engagement and motivation in their work and it determines their satisfaction. If the company culture is not good, employees are often less productive and they are unhappy being there. Your company culture can determine your turnover rates.

4. What are activities that improve company culture?

   Activities that help improve company culture is to improve the orientation and onboarding process and engage with employees year round. The onboarding process can help determine if your company culture needs improving or not. If new employees are not staying a while or seem to not be understanding tasks quicker, reevaluating it can help.

   Engaging with employees and doing regular check-ups can help build better relationships with your employees and see where they are at in their progress.

Author

Michael Overell

Michael Overell is a seasoned entrepreneur and business leader with a proven track record in building companies, products, and teams in both startup and hyper-growth environments. Currently, he serves as a key executive at ClassDojo, where he is responsible for driving revenue growth and helping children around the world access quality education. Michael is also actively involved in investing and providing support to promising foreign founders looking to break into the US market through his work with Antipodes.