A strong culture unifies and educates people, helps in pursuing shared goals, and establishes a powerful value system. Businesses across the world are increasingly focusing on culture and employee engagement because these are integral factors for success, performance and sustainability.
Implementing a corporate wellness platform further enhances employee engagement and contributes to a healthier, more productive workplace environment.
What exactly should a workplace culture be? It is essentially a collection of key values, symbols, meanings, beliefs, assumptions and expectations that organizational members share. Thus, as far as employees’ happiness and productivity is concerned, a workplace culture should have openness and transparency, integrity and trust, and participation and empowerment. All of these crucial touch points make culture as a fundamental component of engaged and happy employees.
The following are 5 key elements for creating right culture for employee happiness:
Hire people that are right fit for your organization
During the hiring process, you need to make sure to hire individuals who fit into your culture. There are many cases when companies hire high performing employees but are not apt for the prevailing culture. It turns out, the attitudes of such individuals is detrimental to company culture, which in turn is detrimental to business. In general, your perception of an organization is also based on the opinions and beliefs of its employees. If they behave nicely and seem happier, you’ll view the company in a positive light. If they seem to be jerks, you wouldn’t have a good impression of the organization. This is why it’s important to hire people who share your company’s values. One bad hire can affect an entire department and possibly dozens of customers.
Communication is the key
Communication is extremely crucial element at the workplace because it allows employees to be productive and companies to operate effectively. Research has also backed the fact that effective lateral and work group communication leads to an improvement in overall company performance. Such a healthy work culture is the key to employee happiness as well. Employees who were graded as highest in production had received the most effective communication from their superiors. Employees feel empowered when they are allowed to establish an upward communication, in which information flow upward and usually consists of feedback and innovative ideas. Furthermore, an effective workplace communication increases employee job satisfaction.
Recognition and appreciation
Recognizing your employees’ efforts and appreciating their performance goes a long way in establishing a healthy workplace culture. Appreciation is a fundamental human need. Employees respond to appreciation expressed through recognition of their good work because it confirms their work is valued by others. Praise and recognition are essential to an outstanding workplace. People want to be respected and valued by others for their contribution. Thus, you need to create goals and action plans for employee recognition that encourages fairness, clarity, consistency and performance. So how should you reward your employees? You can start by celebrating group success, say regarding the completion of a project. Throw small office parties for them; give them gift items with personalized labels and stickers on them using texts or images. This way, every employee will stay motivated as well as happy for his or her efforts.
Create a culture of continuous improvement
Building an effective continuous improvement culture is not just about executing a handful of process improvement projects; it is more about driving sustainable results over time as well. As a result, companies are compelled to adapt how they embed continuous improvement within their organizational cultures. To create a culture that enhances your effort to continuously improve, you must create systems that move things in that direction. Part of that system will be the continuous assessment of how your organization is falling short of your desired culture. Your goal should be to move people beyond viewing innovation as a project; that is, towards viewing it as a process and a capability.
Provide growth opportunities
Providing opportunities for growth and development is highly essential for keeping employees happy and engaged. Organizations that indulge in creating such a culture are able to build high-performing, motivated and productive teams. By giving opportunity to adequately use their skills, your staff is encouraged to utilize those skills and becomes better engaged. As a matter of fact, career advancement and promotions are what employees see as giving them growth and development opportunities. Thus, you have to maintain communication regarding advancement opportunities on an organization-wide level.