Company culture. It’s an essential part of any workplace.
A positive company culture helps employees feel connected, increases staff engagement, and maximises their productivity. So much so, that workers who feel a strong connection to their workplace are 75 times more likely to be engaged with their jobs than employees who don’t feel the same connection. In this sense, a positive company culture needs to be prioritised, actively cultivated and maintained if we want to promote a solid level of staff engagement and job satisfaction in the workplace.
On the flip side, failure to prioritise company culture can result in the development of a toxic workplace environment. This can lead to higher levels of employee dissatisfaction and, ultimately, attrition – if the ‘Great Resignation’ of the post-pandemic era is anything to go by. The warning signs? A decline in staff productivity, engagement and connection to the workplace could indicate that company culture is festering.
The solution? A complete rework. Here’s how to instigate the change.
Tip # 1: Identify Your Current Company Culture
The first step to reworking a toxic company culture is to identify what the culture looks like currently. So, what’s your company culture currently about? Are more to the point – what are your company’s core values?
If you’ve completed a Masters in Public Policy or a similar tertiary degree, you’ll know that a company’s core values are most often inspired by the business’s position on a range of societal issues and ethical concerns. Based on this perspective, a positive company culture focuses on promoting a certain set of company values – including inclusivity, diversity, tolerance, and respect – just to name a few.
If your workplace doesn’t focus on promoting these core values as part of your current company culture, it’s time to implement positive change.
Tip # 2: Ascertain What Needs to Change
If you want your company culture to change, you’ll need to focus on the individual employees that make up your company. Are they happy? Are they engaged? Are they productive? If the answer is no, something needs to change – but what?
Our tips for what to focus on changing:
Employees
If you keep the wrong people around, your company culture will stagnate. Staff with poor attitudes, and who are unproductive and non-committal to their jobs, do nothing good for the culture or environment of a workplace.
You may find that you need to hire and fire accordingly, to fit your new workplace environment. Remember: skills can be taught, but attitude can’t. Ever heard of the ‘personality hire’? Hiring the types of employees who bring positive energy, invigorate, inspire and breathe new life into a workplace is integral to transforming company culture from toxic to outstanding.
Company Policies
Are your staff going off the rails? Always late, skipping important meetings, declining reasonable overtime? It’s time to snap them back into place.
Perhaps, you’ve let your company policies slip and become too lenient, letting your staff get away with sloppy workplace habits. This needs to change, and it comes from the top. Providing solid guidelines for employee expectations will help bring them back in line, and also, create a workplace culture your staff will be proud to be part of.
Staff Benefits
One of the foundations of a great company culture is to offer your staff incentives to stick around. Employee benefits such as interactive activities and outings, complimentary snacks and team bonding events, can do much to up employee engagement and connection to the company.
Tip # 3: Formulate a Company Culture Reset Plan
Ascertained that your company culture needs to change? It’s time to map out a reset plan. But what does this look like? Consider these steps:
- Establish what your new company values will be.
- Use these core values to inform your new company guidelines.
- Implement a rollout of the new company values and guidelines to staff.
- Enforce and reward staff adherence to these updates and innovations.
Tip # 4: Action, Implement and Review
The final step in transforming company culture? You need to review if your recent implementations are working.
How do you do this?
Again, focus on your employees. Observe their attitudes and behaviours. If you see positive developments in their productivity, levels of engagement and connection to the company, the culture change is working.
