The culture around us influences everything we do…and the same is true for your organization: specifically, your workplace culture. But what is workplace culture, and why is it so important?
Workplace Culture Definition
Workplace culture, or company culture, is the sum of your organization’s values, goals, practices, and overall atmosphere. It’s the way employees and management interact with one another, as well as organizational policies and philosophies. It's broad, ever-changing, and heavily influenced by both management and employees.
Positive Workplace Culture Examples
A positive company culture has strong, well-defined values and makes employees feel as though their work has a purpose. It’s essentially a team culture in the workplace According to a 2011 study on organizational practices, this kind of environment includes six elements:
- Treating everyone on the team with kindness and compassion
- Supporting others in their efforts for your organization
- Forgiving and finding solutions for mistakes–without blaming
- Working to inspire one another
- Finding and underlining the meaningful aspects of each person’s work
- Prioritizing respect, trust, and integrity at your organization
To create this kind of culture, it’s crucial to conduct a review. Once you know where your organization stands right now, you can create an environment in which everyone thrives.
5 Reasons to Review Your Workplace Culture Now
1. Identify and Resolve Issues
Reviewing your company culture allows you to pinpoint any issues–with disengaged employees, or even policies or practices that may no longer be working as well as they once did. Engaging with your employees to find solutions has the added benefit of fostering teamwork, camaraderie, and support, all of which creates a more positive atmosphere.
2. Boost Productivity
Studies show that positive leadership and connections at work improve morale, employee satisfaction, and productivity throughout the organization. By reviewing and improving your workplace culture, you’ll help your team excel in more ways than one.
3. Improve Performance
When employees trust their leader and feel secure in their jobs, they’re more likely to experiment and innovate with new ideas. This benefits your staff’s and organization’s performance, as well as customer relationships and even brand image.
4. Reduce Turnover
Empathy is a key element of positive company cultures. It can help people recover from physical and psychological distress, as well as foster positive emotions and reduce anxiety. With a company culture of empathy, support, and compassion, employees become more engaged and committed to the organization, and are more likely to stick around for the long haul.
5. Support Employee and Organizational Health and Well-being
Research shows that a healthy work atmosphere is vital to employee well-being. When your staff experiences friendly interactions with one another, they’re less likely to get sick, faster to recover from injuries, and less susceptible to depression and issues. All of this, in turn, leads to improved job performance, organizational success, and even lower the utilization of healthcare benefits.
How to Assess Your Workplace Culture
Strategies for assessing your company culture include:
- Issuing employee satisfaction surveys
- Gathering feedback through one-on-one meetings
- Assessing your leadership style and prioritizing two-way communication
- Analyzing company policies and procedures to gain insight into the values of the organization and how employees are treated
Once you’ve got a clearer picture of the workplace culture at your organization, you can implement feedback and make adjustments to create an atmosphere that supports everyone involved.
Create a Positive Workplace Culture with a Corporate Wellness Platform
Having a positive workplace culture has a ripple effect on employee engagement, productivity, retention, and overall well-being. And one highly effective way to create one in which employees and your organization thrive is by using a corporate wellness platform like Wellics.
Corporate wellness programs incentivize employees to achieve better work-life balance, reduce stress, and adopt healthy lifestyle habits–all of which positively impact your workplace culture and your organization, as a whole. And because Wellics makes it easy to track customized metrics like healthy behaviors, productivity, and retention, it’s a win-win for both employees and employers.
Book your demo today and learn how Wellics can help you build a positive workplace culture.
Sources:
- Kim Cameron et al., Effects of Positive Practices on Organizational Effectiveness
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3123547/
- https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.1040.0076?journalCode=orsc
- https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/71478/Workman1_Compassion_at_Work.pdf
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310599364_Positive_Relationships_at_Work
