Office culture isn’t mere window dressing. It can have a direct link to how well people perform their jobs. Research has proven that the more comfortable people feel at work, the better their resulting output is. Simply put, a poor organizational culture has the ability to dampen employee morale, sapping their efficiency and creating an underperforming work force. The world’s top-ranking companies know this and make a point of ensuring their workplace atmosphere is finely tuned for happy, high-performing staff.
Improve your workplace culture through these three tips.
Position your firm to only hire the best
Who you fill your office or workplace with will determine what results it produces. If you pump the cubicles full of enthusiastic, determined staff who are in tune with the company’s values and want to see it succeed, then success is exactly what you will get.
But this isn’t some magic process. Rather, it comes down to good hiring, which means putting a focus on the recruitment process, and not marginalizing or downplaying its importance.
Continually work to improve your hiring process. Don’t rush through the hiring stage, but instead, make sure each candidate is thoroughly assessed. Also make sure that the managers doing the hiring go through regular training and are in sync in terms of what to look for. It’s also important to update that training with the lessons learned from previous hires who worked out well.
Humane leadership
Although business can at times be cutthroat and competitive, this doesn’t mean the office culture needs to be as well. One famous job culture guru recently bemoaned companies that, simply put, don’t value their employees. This results in employees who don’t feel emotionally well or positive at work, and is a precondition for failing performance.
Historically, being a “good place to work” was not anywhere near the top of a business concerns, but thankfully, this is now changing – and for good reason. Managers should act in a way that respects their employees as human beings, not merely output-producing workers. As in all things, one of the best ways to get this message across is to lead by example, which leads us to…
Practice what you preach
It’s easy to talk a big game about improving the office culture and work environment. Picking out the values of your company isn’t the hard part, but putting that into practice can be a problem for some managers.
For example, think of a boss who always tells his employees about the importance of punctuality, but time and time again shows up late to meetings. His or her words aren’t going to have much weight with staffers.
This can reap major results, and even a drastic turnaround in some troubled workplaces, but don’t expect instantaneous change. It can take time for employees to see that management respects them and takes their own medicine, so to speak.