You Should Be Thinking About Your Company Culture: Here's why
Jacques' study
The history of company culture dates back to over 70 years ago when Canadian Psychoanalyst and social scientist, Dr Elliott Jacques, discovered its relevance in the organizational context as a determinant of the success of a company. He put his thoughts in his 1951 three-part book, The Changing Culture of a Factory, and extensively talked about a factory in operation— the Glacier Metal Company.
Jacques loved arguments; almost every one of his studies was filled with arguments. In this book, he argued the various methods affecting production and employee relations, exploring the theories of management, organizational structure, and executive levels. This careful study by mastermind, Jacques, gave insights into how organisational leaders at the Glacier Metal Company handled and should have handled team building. A 366-page book of golden information.
In 2017, company culture broke out in HR as a buzzword and earnestly started to shape the way people thought about working with teams whilst promoting better conduct for businesses. 5 years later and it's still the cool new kid on the block.
Any set values, expectations, or even assumptions that guide and inform the interactive and psychological environment structure of your company, is its culture. How do your employees respond to tasks, report to leading positions and interact with one another? The answer to this is predominantly dependent on your company's culture and how strongly it is built and nurtured.
In any business, the principal proprietors of a company's culture are business leaders and managers. They are primarily expected to establish how employees should behave and guide them towards achieving their goals.
Transparency, trust, patience and accessibility are core values that brand leaders are striving to introduce in the workplace environment. Successfully building and maintaining this can be tedious, especially with the disparities in human feelings, wants and levels of satisfaction— this is why the Tribe365 app is dedicated to guiding you and your team every step of the way!
Why You should think about a Good Company culture
A weak company culture kills businesses. Irrespective of amassed funds or the quality of your products and services, poor culture in workspaces will yield less productivity. Of course, big companies like Apple, Ralph Lauren, Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix, do not thrive solely on how good their services and products are. No. Their progress can be traced to their foundational company cultures and team-building processes.
These multi-million dollar companies listed above have their bedrock laid in well-defined company cultures, putting into consideration the thoughts they wanted customers to have of them.
The importance of having a great company culture for your business cannot be overstated as it fundamentally steers the ship of your company's development in the long run. If you think starting a business is difficult, try running and maintaining one with a weak organizational culture.
If your employees feel valued, then your culture is on the right path. In all, it creates an environment where they can make strong decisions that attain high-level performances— whether it’s by working from home, taking on a new task or contributing ideas to the company's growth.
An employee who feels valued is likely to stay longer, contribute more effectively, and create great word of the mouth marketing strategies for the brand.
How to foster good company culture
The vibe or aura in a workplace environment that an employee perceives when they join in, is an antecedent for how long they'll stay and how much they'll enjoy their stay. This is essentially what Tribe365 is helping leaders develop. Very different people seek and get offered jobs every day: people from varying backgrounds and company cultures, and hyper-emotional people. Your company culture is not positive if it doesn't consider the impact of human emotions whilst improving teamwork, boosting morale, and increasing productivity and collaboration.
There are over a ton of ways to ensure that company culture can impact employee engagement and the overall performance of a company, but here are our top three:
1. Effective Collaboration and communication process
When leaders and managers exhibit traits that encourage teamwork through open and honest communication, this steers a positive vibe in the workplace. Giving employees the opportunities to build meaningful relationships with leaders, managers and co-workers is one way to boost company culture.
Transparent and honest communication means that regular audits are done to check the progress of team interactions in the company. Feedback is welcomed and recorded, and opportunities for discussions which may include food and drinks, are enabled. Employees can talk about how they feel, why they're pissed or happy or why they will not have bacon for breakfast.
2. Rewards for the employees:
Motivated employees put in the best work. This is one of the top factors that substantially contribute to a company’s success according to a Detroit survey.
Strong company cultures offer promotions, career development programs and extra training workshops which can keep employees motivated and consequently improve their performance.
A transparent policy for progression and promotion is another great way to motivate the staff as it allows them to measure their performance and do better.
3. Good Employee Retention System
Retaining good and high-performing employees outlines the healthiness of your company. It is strongly advisable that you work with a system or platform that works to keep your company culture in check by monitoring employee progress, hosting monthly talks and lots more.
Create a system with the best employee retention program for them and let them understand extensively that it's their company too, that its scalability and growth are dependent on how they work.
