Company culture has been a buzzword for many years. Every company has a culture, but it’s up to the company to determine whether it’s healthy or unhealthy, strong or weak and make the changes to improve it as needed. It doesn’t matter if a company is large or small. They can all develop the tools to improve in multiple areas, increase engagement and overall employee satisfaction. By making several small changes, employers can have a huge impact on the company culture and its positive development.
Focus on Teams
While individual projects can still make up a large portion of the workday, it is important to give employees time to invest in their particular teams. Whether this is by promoting a weekly department or team meeting or coordinating company-wide team-building events, companies all have the power to build strong departments across the board. These strong teams will help employees stay motivated and engaged with one another and better understand how their individual role fits with the rest of the team and the larger company. Teams can also offer support, guidance and second opinions, which make employees feel more confident in their positions, boosting productivity and a sense of belonging.
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Quit Micromanaging and Embrace Employee Autonomy
It’s no secret that employees hate to be micromanaged, because micromanagement is inherently about the lack of trust. Many times it happens without managers necessarily realizing they‘re doing it until it’s too late and shows up in an exit survey or review. If managers haven’t had the time to build trust in their teams, it can be especially easy to do this. So start building trust and help employees embrace their autonomy from day one so that they can manage up more and managers don’t have to manage down nearly as much. Employee autonomy also gives individuals the opportunity to try or suggest new ideas that could be game changers for the companies they work for. Consider creating decision making opportunities to help employees gain confidence in their skills and also establish autonomous teams in order to help with the transition to managing up.
Recognize and Reward Valuable Work
According to Josh Bersin in an article for Forbes, companies who are recognized as the top 20% in employee recognition have a retention rate that’s 31% higher than that of their counterparts. Obviously, employee recognition is not something that should be passed by. Set up a timely, meaningful recognition and reward program for the whole company, or you could have managers develop them for their own departments if the company is too large to effectively recognize every deserving employee. Recognition programs don’t have to be expensive. Consider rewarding with gift cards, time off, or through an incremental program such as reward points that can be accumulated and redeemed later for gift cards or company swag. The bottom line is this: employees are often motivated by recognition and that is something that employers shouldn’t ignore.
Company culture is not just about free snacks or happy hours on Fridays. Understanding that and implementing changes to create a thriving culture is one of the first steps to engaged employees and low turnover rates.
The BirdDogHR Performance Management System gives managers the opportunity to document and prepare for performance reviews, which allows them to better plan for the future of their company as well as see the results of their more engaged workforce. Contact us today for more information or to schedule a demo.
