According to research highlighted by Harvard Business Review, positive work cultures promote more productive, engaged, and happier employees. Also, according to one survey highlighted by Forbes, “corporate culture, however it is defined, makes a difference in companies’ performance and value.”
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Overall, implementing a positive company culture is becoming an important thing for organizations of all shapes and sizes to do because it yields so many benefits to so many parties involved. If you’re interested in implementing a new company culture, too, here are five steps you’ll want to take.
1. Know What Your Current Workplace Culture Is Like
Even if you haven’t actively worked to establish a positive company culture yet, there still is some sort of culture in place at your organization, albeit an unideal, bad, or toxic one. And before you move forward with implementing a new company culture, you’re going to want to take note of your current:
- Company values and mission and how they’re represented internally and externally
- Methods and avenues of communication (or lack thereof)
- Traditions or celebrations employees participate in or want to participate in
- How or if employees are involved in their local communities
- When and how employees participate in learning and training
- Team dynamics or how employees work (or don’t work) together
- Work spaces and where people work and/or congregate for meetings, lunch, breaks, etc.
2. Establish a Vision for Where You Want Your Company to Go
Collaborate with executives, managers, and employees to establish a vision for how you can actualize your company’s values and mission and what you want your company culture to be like.
You can distribute surveys or questionnaires and conduct meetings to gain insight into what people at your organization want and how they envision your company being more impactful on a day-to-day basis, both internally and externally.
And you might find that your organization already has a lot of good qualities and elements that it can build off, such as a great collaboration tool that people like to use or a daily tradition that keeps teams motivated and engaged, etc.
3. Gain Buy-In
Once you get a clearer vision together for what you want your company culture to look like, you’ll need executive buy-in, as well as buy-in from managers and their employees. Most of your employees need to be on board with your vision of a new company culture if you want it to be successful.
4. Offer Training and Support
Additionally, managers must support their employees in the following four ways if they want to implement a positive company culture:
- Foster social connections.
- Show empathy.
- Go out of their way to help.
- Encourage people to talk to them about their problems.
In other words, a great way to implement a new and positive company culture is to also ensure that employees—especially managers and executives—undergo training for emotional intelligence and servant leadership.
5. Continually Enforce Your New Company Culture Every Day
To ensure your newly implemented company culture becomes a regular reality, you’ll need to make sure it becomes a habit and routine and that it’s deeply engrained in what employees do daily and weekly at your organization.
Make sure that your communications and e-mails embody your new company culture and that your daily meetings and traditions uphold it, too. And make sure that you and other managers and executives across your organization are leading by example by representing your new company culture’s core values and mission in what they say and do, as well.
If you’re interested in implementing a new company culture, start with the five steps above.