Part 2: Improving the Culture Within Your Company

Our last blog post explained the reasons why having a healthy business culture is crucial for your brand. The positive effects of a healthy culture are many, while the impact of letting the culture of your company degrade can be very detrimental indeed. In our earlier post, we touched on ways to measure the cultural health of your company, but just how do you boost that culture if needed?

If you have established that the culture of your company needs some adjusting or refreshing, there are a few questions you will want to ask yourself first:

• What attributes do you want your company’s atmosphere to convey? Inventiveness, respectfulness, acceptance, fun, etc.
• What are your company’s values and how can the culture reflect them?
• How is information presently distributed in the company and just how does this affect the culture?
• Do you reward employees and in what ways? 
• Does everybody in the company feel heard? If not, how might you improve this?

More questions than answers may come up, so brainstorming with your colleagues is a great strategy for finding creative answers. Below are a few ideas to start with:

Suggestion/Thought box – This is an good way to let individuals to share opinions regarding the current events within the company. The employee could elect to make the suggestion anonymous or not, and any ideas or concerns could be addressed in monthly company gatherings.

Empower employees – Let your employees make decisions. Treat your staff as peers; let them have a say and listen to their ideas. Also be a transparent leader. Don’t just tell your employees when things are great, but also let them know tactfully when things aren’t going so well.

Flexible hours – Trusting your employees to get their work done is key. Don’t constantly hang over or micro-manage them. Trusting your employees to get their jobs done will give you less stress, as well as result in the general company culture more respectful.

Dress code – These days it is unusual that individuals are required to dress in suits and ties on a regular basis.  Allowing employees freedom to express themselves with their clothing is a simple technique to make them feel accepted for who they are. To take this one step further, think about themed days: silly hat day, bright clothing day, 80’s day, etc. It’s amazing how important self-expression can be.

Celebrate – Your company is the sum of everyone in it. Celebrate your team with group activities.  For instance, cater lunch for everyone, have a movie or game day, or just throw a party. This can bring about more communication in your team and promote cooperation.

Here are some things companies do to give their culture a fun edge:

• Spontaneous Nerf gun wars
• Painting inspirational quotes on the walls
• Hitting a loud gong when there is a success to let the whole company know
• Foosball tournaments
• Lunchtime Yoga
• Lunchtime Crafting Club
• Monday Mad Libs, whoever wishes to contribute, does, and then the completed Mad Lib is emailed to the company