Maintaining a cohesive company culture is essential to the operation of a successful business. Your culture drives effective communication, enhances collaboration, and protects your reputation – yet many organizations struggle to define their culture post-COVID. Many businesses were forced to reinvent both during the crisis and afterward as “Quiet Quitting” and “The Great Resignation” took hold. With the current environment stabilizing, it is an excellent time to take proactive steps to improve and redirect company culture.
Defining company culture is vital to ensure employee engagement, reduce attrition, build brand value, and elevate productivity.
Tips for Improving and Enhancing Company Culture
“Where great cultures exist, there are characteristics we always see – passionate executive leadership, a people-first mindset, transparency with communication and access to knowledge, engagement in systems and practices, and commitment to first-line manager development. Foundational to the development of these characteristics is the right enablement technologies.” Craig North, Chief Executive Officer at KLONE.
There is no “best way” to cultivate culture, as every organization has a unique personality, mission, and set of goals. Still, there are some basic recommendations from experts on getting company culture back on track.
- Define and establish your purpose: If employees don’t understand the business’s core values, it is challenging to create a unified culture. Therefore, one of the first steps to strengthening culture is ensuring that all employees are familiar with your mission statement, core values, and expectations. Clarifying these essential organizational tenets allows employees to invest personally in the company’s direction, boosting motivation, collaboration, and productivity.
- Facilitate effective and productive communication: A lack of communication is one of the primary reasons employees may feel unimportant, inconsequential, or “out of the loop.” Without clear direction, documented expectations, or positive feedback, these employees rarely stay with an organization long-term. Conversely, when employees are informed, involved, and free to participate in the conversation, they are more motivated and productive. Leadership should concentrate on information availability, a safe feedback and response system, and cross-team collaboration – both vertical and horizontal.
- Expect leadership to exemplify your culture: Articulating company values is a significant first step, but management must “walk the walk” for lasting culture improvements. Leading by example is vital because employees learn to trust their leader’s integrity. If leadership professes ethical values but acts unethically, the resulting cognitive dissonance can cause disengagement and a loss of productivity all the way down the hierarchy.
- Prioritize team building as a part of your culture: In hybrid work environments, employees can quickly feel a disconnect between themselves and their colleagues. They may also lose the sense that their job is essential to the organization. While critical to morale, team-building events and exercises also allow friendships and add a bit of levity to a serious workplace. Team building encourages and enhances employee engagement by allowing employees to feel invested in each other and the company’s mission.
- Have a strategy for rewarding excellence: When team members do their jobs well, management teams focused on success will acknowledge their achievements. Rewarding excellence motivates employees to exceed expectations while avoiding the loss of those team members who feel exploited, overworked, or underappreciated. In addition to recognition from leadership, a strong company culture allows employees at all levels to publicly “shout out” their team members and colleagues who are doing great work.
- Make transparency a core value: Establishing trust between employees and leadership is essential to a strong culture, and embracing transparency is the key. Motivated and engaged employees understand the expectations placed on them and the “why” behind these goals. Therefore, management should strive to make the company’s policies and direction transparent, as well as the expectations for each job description and how to earn rewards and recognition. Transparency also extends to explaining unacceptable behaviors and associated consequences, so necessary disciplinary measures are not unexpected. Full transparency – and the ability to provide feedback or ask questions – allows the team to make informed decisions, fully engage and collaborate with others, and elevate team performance.
How Accessible Knowledge Facilitates Culture
Reading through these recommendations, you may notice they all hinge on both employees and management:
- having ready access to the knowledge they need to perform their job
- being able to work with others to maximize productivity
- being given the ability to participate in the knowledge-sharing process
Therefore, when establishing company culture, it is essential for management to aggregate and make available pertinent information and encourage feedback and participation regarding that knowledge. This requires an online repository of all company policies, procedures, training materials, and information – as well as interactive forums to discuss, recognize and collaborate.
The KLONE Organizer provides a streamlined solution to help companies establish a robust company culture that will carry them through whatever challenges lay ahead. Call today to learn more.