Nitin is the founder of QRCodeChimp. He’s a technology leader with over two decades of technology development and management experience.
A positive organizational culture is a key driver of employee performance, productivity and satisfaction. On the other hand, its absence can lead to low employee morale, increased conflicts and higher attrition.
But how do you create a positive work culture that ensures higher engagement, innovation, creativity and employee retention?
I’ve identified these six indispensable pillars of positive work culture that every organization should adopt.
Trusting And Allowing Expression
Trusting your employees and allowing them to express themselves helps create a positive organizational culture. I strongly believe that your hiring process should be as rigorous as possible. But once you hire someone, trust in their instincts and decisions.
Rewards And Recognition
About 44% of employees leave an organization due to a lack of recognition.
Rewards and recognition go a long way in fostering a positive work culture. They spike employee motivation and create a sense of achievement, which can result in higher employee satisfaction and retention.
At QRCodeChimp, I’ve implemented a rewards structure wherein we organize a small event on the last day of each month. We identify the top performers from each department and give them a round of applause and a gift card.
Approachability And Communication
Clear and concise communication ensures transparency in an organization, which is crucial for a positive work culture.
We can split clear communication into three levels:
1. Senior To Junior
Leaders and managers in an organization should clearly communicate changes and updates in an organization. Information like changes in expectations, KPIs and promotion of people to higher levels/designations.
2. Junior To Senior
Leaders, managers and senior employees in an organization should be approachable to junior employees. An open-door policy, welcoming body language and responsiveness can encourage approachability in an organization.
3. Employee To Employee
Employees on the same level should communicate and collaborate without any gaps. This includes both inter-team and cross-team communication.
Allowing Mistakes And Appropriately Addressing Them
Employees are humans, and they can make mistakes. In fact, mistakes are the best teacher, right?
Here’s why you should allow employees to make mistakes in the workplace:
• Makes employees feel safe knowing their errors won’t have negative repercussions
• Fosters a culture of innovation and experimentation
• Ensures trust and transparency
• Enables employees to learn and grow
That said, allowing employees to make mistakes is only half the work done. It’s important to appropriately address those mistakes so the employees (1) learn from them and (2) don’t repeat them.
Team Outings And Celebrations
Finally, let’s move to team outings, one of my favorite ways to boost team culture. Every day, employees are in a “work mode” where their objective is to complete tasks. Most conversations in the office are professional and work-related, which might seem a bit robotic.
It’s important to have frequent outings to help the team come out of that robotic process and feel human again. At QRCodeChimp, I ensure at least one team lunch and one staycation a month to ensure everyone is relaxed and in the best state of mind.
Strategic And Mindful Hiring
An organization is as good as its employees. Therefore, hiring the right employees is crucial for the success of any business and organization.
However, apart from hiring highly skilled employees, finding people based on the culture you want to create in an organization is vital.
For instance, if you want a culture of competition and continuous improvement, hiring highly-competitive people is suitable. However, you’ll have to accept that conflicts and disputes may arise when the competition gets intense.
On the other hand, if you want a culture of collaboration, it’s best to hire people who are easy to work with and have good interpersonal skills.
Wrap Up
Organizational culture is instrumental to a happy and high-performance workspace. And it’s not just important for enterprises. Startups and small businesses must create a strong and positive organizational culture early on to ensure high employee productivity and satisfaction.
When culture is prioritized at an early stage, it makes scaling up hassle-free and helps the organization grow multifold.
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