Create a Company Culture That Boosts Productivity

When you give a face to a company, you do more than pimp up your image on social media—you raise morale and enthusiasm of your team and make them more likely to be productive in the workplace.

Culture is an important aspect of a company that affects its internal functions. The use of words like “positive” and “fast-paced” by companies who want to attract techies are all the hype in the corporate world these days. After all, millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce.

Why focus on building a company culture?

In today’s world driven by social media, it’s more important for public entities like companies to have an identity. Having an identity is a powerful thing, and a company culture is part of a brand’s identity.

When you give a face to a company, you do more than pimp up your image on social media, you raise morale and enthusiasm of your team and make them more likely to be productive in the workplace.

Here’s how you can create a company culture that boosts productivity:

1. Level up your office design

Companies like Google & Apple are known for coming up with the coolest ideas for office facilities to stimulate the creative juice of their employees. It may seem crazy at first, but this move actually builds on research, as about 75% of employees say their companies don’t have nice facilities for relaxation and recreation, which leads to unhappy workers and low levels of productivity.

While you don’t necessarily have to copy Google, you can up your office architecture by paying attention to two things, the light and function. Research shows that 40% of people consider lighting to be the most important factor affecting their productivity at work. Thus, investing in functional lighting is a great way to increase your team’s productivity levels.

2. Encourage your team to take breaks

Being productive and coming up with ideas is mentally draining, and your team is made up of human beings that need to recharge their creative juices every now and then. This is why it’s so important to establish and encourage (even demand) your team to take regular breaks in between their work to refresh the brain and prepare it to come up with the next big idea.

Multiple studies argue how long is the optimal break duration that results in maximum productivity boost, but a study suggests that taking 9-minute breaks every 51 minutes of work increased productivity and lowered stress levels for employees.

3. Cultivate a “Growth Mindset”

Taking on bigger roles and harder responsibilities is a must for employees to excel in their career. To do that, leaders need to promote the growth mindset, encourage making small mistakes, and of course, learning from them.

In her research, author and Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, highlights that people who have a “fixed mindset” are more prone to avoiding challenging tasks to avoid making mistakes and be treated as failures.

Companies thrive on innovation, and for innovation to pursue, team leaders must cultivate the “growth mindset” among their team. This means that the culture openly accepts employees to make missteps along the way because they understand that these mistakes give them the learnings they need to grow and evolve.

This doesn’t mean praising employees for their laziness. There is a fine line between experimenting to see which works and failing miserably, and it is a skill that you as a manager need to develop over time.

4. Treat transparency seriously

If your employees don’t have the same level of enthusiasm and motivation to your company as you, ask yourself, “Do they have the same outlook of the company as you? Being transparent about what goes on in your company can have a positive effect on the performance of your team. When your employees feel trusted, they become more involved in their tasks and responsibilities, which makes them more enthusiastic about expending effort on their tasks.

Once you open your company to the possibility of increased enthusiasm, your employees are more open to collaborating with one another, are more motivated to share the risks, and most importantly, the rewards of your team efforts.

Do this always and in tandem with every other culture initiative, or your culture will be merely hollow words on a mission statement. Done well, however, and the culture will bleed into employees who will spread your culture, whatever it may be.

As your company grows, culture will help keep it on track, steer hiring decisions for the people who will maintain that success and safeguard your company from spiraling into something you don’t recognize — even if you no longer know everybody’s name.