Strategy is usually at the forefront of a company’s focus. Strategy is not the only thing that makes a company successful. Culture also plays a vital role. The culture of your company impacts your branding, your marketing success, and daily operations, all of which directly affect how the world sees your organization. The logos of brands like Apple, Google, and Starbucks are identifiable not only because they seem to be everywhere, but also these businesses have strong cultures that shine through their employees, storefronts, and logos. These positive, strong cultures all begin within the walls of their offices.
Why Culture is so Important
Giving your employees a feeling of ownership over their jobs makes them feel empowered, and empowerment encourages innovative thinking. This all begins with a healthy workplace culture. If people feel invisible or stifled in their work place, they’ll do the bare minimum expected of them. It’s human nature to want to feel like we are part of something and that we have some control over our lives. Don’t forget that your brand is comprised of the individuals in your company. So nurturing a positive company culture is not just the responsibility of the HR department, but of everyone, from the CEO to the janitor.
A healthy culture has several benefits. Take a look at a few and the reasons why they can have such a significant effect.
- Focus – Keeping employees aimed at the same goal helps a business run with efficiency. Getting people to care about the goal comes with having a healthy focus. If your employees feel like they are a significant part of accomplishing that goal they will be more likely to push themselves. When people feel like they have no influence on the main goal, they loose focus, and can become cynical.
- Cohesion – The foundation of cohesion is strong communication between team members, whether they are dealing with successes or roadblocks. Strong communication fortifies teamwork and makes operations run more smoothly. In a workplace with an unhealthy culture, people may be nervous to offer feedback about problems that arise or might not care enough to act quickly when issues do arise.
- Motivation – It may seem obvious that a enthusiastic workforce gets things done, but firms that are not aware of the health of their culture could be suffering when it comes to efficiency.
Measuring the Cultural Health of Your Company
Cultural health ought to be analyzed regularly. So how do you evaluate the cultural health of a company? First, look at how people are supervised, are they just given a task with no input or do they have some control over their jobs? Are repetitive tasks distributed so everyone has the opportunity to be challenged? While a few people may never be happy, if you find the overwhelming consensus to be poor it may be time for you to look at making a few adjustments to how the business is run to improve the culture and the overall health of the company. Visit again soon to find out some tips on creating a positive work environment.
