Company culture is becoming so important to recruiting talented employees, and it is vital to understand what makes a great experience for your employees. Despite the stereotypes, culture goes far beyond free lunches and office holiday parties. Understanding the expectations of current and potential workers and going beyond those expectations can set you apart from your competition not only in terms of hiring, but also in terms of the great customer service that happy employees can impart to your customers.
Creating Experiences
Creating fun, interesting workplace experiences is what most people think of when they think of company culture. This is the surface level of company culture, and it is usually an important factor that interviewees use to make the decision of which company they will work for. This can be something simple, like providing snacks and drinks in the break room, but to really stand out you may want to think bigger.
What have been your most positive and memorable experiences with your coworkers? This could be fun and creative team building exercises, bonding with your team after work over drinks, lighthearted competitions and contests, or any number of things. Experiences can also include almost anything that makes your life or your job easier or more fulfilling.
Generating Trust
Trust makes an incredible difference in the happiness and confidence of your employees, particularly their trust in their manager and their employer. However, not every manager knows how to create an environment of trust successfully. There are many ways to begin this process, but the most important factor is to be accessible to your team for questions, feedback, and assistance.
Modern employees respond best to someone they can voice their concerns to without judgement. Being a dependable manager who also expects dependability in their employees will allow them to model their workplace behavior after yours in a constructive way, while keeping a dialogue open to allow for new and exciting ideas.
Preventing Burnout
If you have never suffered from corporate burnout, you may be in a shrinking minority. Culture trends say that over three quarters of workers suffer from burnout. This results in lower productivity, and an employee who could end up dragging their team down instead of bolstering them up. The phenomenon is so common that it has been the subject of medical research.
Causes include a poor work-life balance and support structure, no direction at work, and a feeling of powerlessness or lack of control. In order to combat this in your employees, make sure to give everyone a clear path and job expectations wherever possible. Changing the rules frequently can make your workers feel confused and that their efforts are being wasted. It is also important that you stay in touch with your team and be aware of their individual needs. To ensure this as easily as possible, maintain an open door policy, schedule regular one-on-one meetings, or both.
Encouraging Teamwork
Few things make someone feel as fulfilled at work as contributing meaningfully to an important group project. Teamwork is a fantastic way to allow creativity to blossom through collaboration. The key to a successful team, however, is to make sure that teams are created with specific goals in mind, and that the employees selected for those teams can all contribute in real, important ways.
It is also important to make sure the team has the authority to put their ideas into practice. A team that has to run each and every idea or plan past a superior is not only going to take longer to complete its goal, the team members will likely also feel stifled and be unable to work productively.
There are plenty of ways to create a fun, creative and productive work environment that go beyond the surface level, including developing trust and teamwork. Communication is key in creating a great team of employees who are excited to come to work each day and build up your company.