Improve Quality & Productivity
Company culture is big today, so big that some call it “the heart and soul of an organization”. It’s a set of shared values that help the company employees to feel as one. For a company culture to be strong, it must be full of people with a common goal, overall beliefs and a complimentary experience history.
Give your employees power
For your employees to feel productive and engaged, they must be made to feel valued as individuals and important participants of the broader team. There are a lot of ways to go about empowering employees:
- from showing appreciation and gratefulness for work completed
- allowing flexible scheduling that acknowledges their existence outside of work
- allow them input on how the business is run & managed
- Shorten the weekly hours as studies have shown it actually increases productivity1.
While working at home may seem cheaper, how many extra hours do you have to work because of interruptions from family, friends & neighbors?
Find a CoWorking space that fits your needs and start using it. Plus, it’s a tax deduction at the end of the year.
Improve communication
Miscommunications. the feeling that there are secrets in the workplace or favoritism causes frustration, stress, and even employee turnover. Don’t hide bad news from employees in order to to maintain face and prevent panic over job security. This plan often backfires, and the stories that employees share are often far worse than the truth.
Just come out with it and let everyone know how bad it really is, right away. If you don’t your “We lost the Mills account” may blow up to, “The company is folding because they have no more clients.”
Even when nothing is wrong, have a weekly internal newsletter keeping everyone in the loop. Include the good and the bad.
Look to the future
You should work with your employees to better understand their long-term goals and aspirations. Then you could put programs in place to help employees work toward those goals, through support, mentoring, and learning opportunities. When businesses invest in their employees’ futures, they find that their employees are more invested in the future of the company, and that going to work doesn’t bring forth feelings of dread.
One great idea is planning for retirement. Maybe you can have meetings after hours weekly, monthly or quarterly to help your employees plan and invest in their retirement and savings.
Hire leaders
Don’t hire managers, anyone can learn to do that. Hire leaders, people that your people will want to follow. These people are the ones who not only have the management skills you want and need, but they also have great people skills and can solve problems and issues on the spot.
Grow leaders from within. No one wants a dead-end job. Create programs to help your present employees to move up your ladder, so that you can keep them in house saving all the money you would pay out retraining someone to take their position.
Let them mingle
Want really good work coming from your employees? Take down the barriers between the different departments and management. Don’t be afraid of floor manager Joe getting too chummy with Art because with the right culture, neither will expect any special treatment from the other.
Let them eat in the same space, preferably a cafeteria or maybe an outside area. Let them take breaks together.
What other benefit might this have? It will help break the idea that there are secrets in the upper echelons. Plus, if a concern comes up, you can enlighten the team at lunch and maybe even have a fix by the end of lunch time.
Notes:
- More links to other articles/studies:
What other money tips or ideas for creating a better workplace culture do you have? Please, let us know below.
