How to Improve Workplace Culture

I was stunned while reading this article entitled “How to Improve Workplace Culture”

As many of our readers know, organizational culture can make or break a business.

Because culture is the primary factor for determining how well an organization executes on every other aspect of organizational performance, continually nurturing a strong culture that values people is an ongoing challenge for leaders.

Whether recruiting top talent, keeping employees engaged, building and raising brand awareness, or inspiring an environment where innovation is the norm, organizational culture drives success. But even strong workplace cultures can always be improved upon.

Here are 11 essential steps to improve workplace culture in your organization.

Step 1: Embrace Authenticity

“When you are building a culture, it’s got to be about your authenticity as a leader.”

When a leader shares their true self with their team—who they are, what they stand for, their values, their purpose, their vision for the work the organization is doing and will do in the future—this reinforces cultural alignment and demonstrates a level of transparency that is sure to build trust between employees and leadership.?

Step 2: Foster an Environment of Inclusion

One of the most important functions of embracing authenticity is that it makes employees feel more comfortable being their authentic selves at work. This relates strongly to the idea of inclusion, which is becoming?increasingly important?to job seekers.?

Inclusion goes beyond diversity and is also a necessary component of a diverse organization; creating an inclusive environment is?essential?for successfully building a diverse team.

Step 3: Build Trust Through Mentoring and Coaching

Since leaders play such a vital role in setting the tone for corporate culture and helping it develop, if employees don’t trust leadership or have weak relationships with upper management, employees will be?disconnected?from other aspects of culture as well.

As a leader, consider speaking “with employees” instead of “to employees” so they feel more appreciated, supported, and valued. Regular one-to-one meetings can provide wonderful opportunities for mentoring and coaching employees to be the best version of themselves.?

Step 4: Recognize Employees for Their Contributions

Recognition?is an essential component of any strong organizational culture.

It is important because it meets a core human need for both the employee and the manager. Meeting this need is a key aspect of a strong company culture because it increases job satisfaction, employee engagement and retention, and quality of work.

Successfully cultivating both appreciation and recognition is a great leadership move and yields a variety of positive results. When organizations routinely recognize the contributions of employees, it makes them feel valued and more satisfied in their jobs.

Step 5: Provide Regular Feedback

Recognizing the accomplishments of employees is an essential mechanism for ensuring a happy work environment where employees flourish. However, it’s important to ensure that praise and recognition are just part of the communication process.

Consistently providing feedback to employees, even when it isn’t about recognizing an outstanding accomplishment, is a vital part of the communication process between employees and top leadership.

Step 6: Communicate Expectations Clearly

Poor communication makes it difficult for employees to fully understand their roles, develop in those roles, or grow into new roles, and for organizations to identify and address issues that must be corrected for success.

Many leaders would agree that setting clear, measurable expectations is a vital part of their leadership duties and an essential part of healthy communication at every level of an organization.

Step 7: Offer Employees Flexibility

Work–life imbalance?can negatively impact?employee sustainability?and the physical and mental health and well-being of employees.?

With prolonged work-disrupting events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, providing employees with the flexibility they need to perform at their best while also successfully managing the needs of their families and personal lives becomes even more important for maintaining a good workplace culture and a high level of morale.?

Step 8: Provide the Autonomy Employees Need To Succeed

It is important to equip employees with the tools they need to succeed. One tool we’ve mentioned that employees greatly value is flexibility. Increasingly, this means the ability to work independently and with autonomy.?

With hybrid and remote work becoming not only popular but essential in many situations, flexibility by way of autonomy may be key to boosting performance and ensuring that culture doesn’t suffer.?

Employee autonomy and empowerment are vital to building a high-performing team. When employees are given the trust and encouragement to work autonomously, they can accomplish amazing things.?

Step 9: Offer Learning and Development Opportunities

Because learning is essential for employees to develop new skills and find fulfillment in their work, companies that foster a learning culture and offer development opportunities to their employees are laying the groundwork for long-term success with a team of engaged employees who do their jobs well.

Step 10: Eliminate Toxic Elements

If you notice burnout or dysfunction within your team that is hindering performance, lowering morale, and hurting trust, the positive culture you have worked so hard to build may be systematically being destroyed by toxic situations.?

In fact,?toxic culture?is one of the top predictors of turnover currently and a contributing factor to the Great Resignation.

For this reason, leaders want to maintain cultures that are inhospitable to toxic behaviors.?

Step 11: Regularly Revisit the Mission, Vision, and Core Values

Because it is so hard to copy and affects the organization at so many levels and in so many ways, particularly where employee engagement and retention are concerned, culture can be both a company’s greatest asset and its greatest challenge to develop and maintain.

Leaders should constantly fine-tune culture as part of the improvement process. This means providing what employees need to succeed but also addressing inconsistencies between cultural philosophy and daily practice that could create a less-than-engaging environment for employees.

If you are dealing with a truly dysfunctional team, it may be necessary to do a complete overhaul of your organization’s culture and revisit core values to determine where things are going wrong.?

When leaders find themselves in this situation, these steps can guide them toward improvement. Employees can also guide leaders toward identifying areas where core values need adjusting or could be better implemented.?

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article here for more ideas and perspective. Afterwards, why not drop me an email to share your thoughts at [email protected]; or call me on 0467 749 378.

Thanks,

Robert