Your business may be suffering from an unhappy, undervalued workforce. Rectifying that could put you on the path for sustained success
Have you ever wondered how much of your life will be spent in your workplace? Well, the average worker in the UK can spend between 80 and 90 thousand hours at their job. Put another way, we – as adults – probably dedicate about a third of our waking hours to work.
That’s a long time for an employee to commit to, particularly if they happen to hate a thing or two about their job and the way their employer runs things.
If you’re a business owner, have you done enough to create a positive company culture? Do your employees trudge in, begrudgingly carrying out their duties before clocking out, dreading the next day’s repeating of the process? You may be unaware of it, but it’s possible you have a negative, even toxic, company culture.
Do your employees experience poor communication throughout the company? Do they not feel that the firm has their best interests in mind or that they’re treated respectfully and fairly? If so, you may have problems brewing in the workplace.
If your employees aren’t engaged in their work and don’t feel valued or supported at your small-to-medium enterprise (SME) you may be missing out on higher productivity and output levels. There has been evidence of moderate correlations between happiness in workers and improved attention, creativity and willingness to use their initiative.
Consider if your business has a high turnover of staff, if a high number of employees are stressed, sick or unmotivated, and if a negative culture is a factor. Is discrimination or exclusionary behaviour commonplace? Are your workers asked to deal with excessive workloads and outlandish expectations? If this sounds eerily familiar, you probably aren’t getting the best out of your workers.
There are numerous benefits to a positive business culture. In addition to that higher productivity, improved morale across the board will undoubtedly boost collaboration and interaction. And if you’ve fostered such a culture, those on your watch will feel more engaged and ready to perform to the best of their ability. They’re also far less likely to be eyeing the exit door, both at the end of their shift and in the longer term.
The question is, how do you establish and maintain a company culture that benefits everyone at your SME?
“Culture is what motivates and retains talented employees”
Betty Thompson, broadcaster and charity fundraiser
The first task in creating and developing a positive culture in the workplace is to establish what values you want the business to place at the core of its mission. A strong company culture will be based on common goals and a shared set of practices and attitudes.
If your business hasn’t necessarily established that, it should be acknowledged before you can engage your workers in a shared commitment to creating guiding principles. These should set out how you want employees to behave and what image you’d like the business to portray. A vision statement sets out the long-term aims for your SME, ideally promoting growth and establishing the foundations for success. Your mission statement focuses on what you and your team will do on a daily basis to accomplish the future goals of the vision statement.
Clarity is key in promoting your SME and its values. A few generic watchwords may, on the surface, look fine as a motto on your home page but won’t really deliver the message of purpose, aspiration or ambition you want at the heart of the company.
Keep your employees in mind when devising your new company culture. After all, they’re expected to adhere to the values, so promote a shared purpose to boost camaraderie, teamwork and equality.
“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person… are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled”
Anne M Mulcahy, Xerox CEO
If you’re to truly include your employees’ opinions and foster inclusivity, you’ll need to diagnose what they view as negative elements in the workplace. Gather honest feedback from your staff members. You could conduct anonymous surveys, which may identify any patterns, behaviours or themes that cause unrest or dissatisfaction.
If your employees are involved in creating, and improving, your company culture, they’re far more likely to buy into your vision. Any changes implemented will feel less of an imposition and more like a joint venture, so work with them to develop effective practices and measures that will promote your firm’s success and progress. They are directly affected by the workplace culture so they should have the opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas.
Cohesion will ensure that the new, positive environment is supported by your employees.
“Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business. It’s as simple as that”
Richard Branson, Virgin co-founder
When the people you employ feel valued and their contributions valid, you will undoubtedly get the best out of them. Consider whether they have opportunities to build on their existing skills and strengths and explore how they can refine their expertise.
So, treat your employees like they make a difference – the chances are, they probably will do when given the right culture.
Enable your workers to feel that there is room for progression in their role, with management support, training, development and by entrusting them with an expanded range of responsibilities. Also, recognise and acknowledge the impact that their efforts have on your business. You might be pleasantly surprised at the morale boost that improving their personal prospects will provide.
“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first”
Simon Sinek, author and motivational speaker
A company with happier workers is generally one that allows them to feel valued. That isn’t to say a host of other factors never come into play when you’re trying to build a positive, welcoming company culture. If you can pay a fair wage, offer attractive benefits and enable job satisfaction, you’ve probably got yourself a fair few happy workers. You will undoubtedly have heard the phrase ‘work-life balance’ – increasingly so in recent years.
The advancement of home-working opportunities, and hybrid arrangements such as two or three days at home each week, means employees don’t have to choose between their career and their family life. You should also encourage your employees to provide honest feedback on any gaps in your offering that they’re concerned about, or any suggestions on improving the culture at your workplace. When your people feel connected to an organisation, and that their lives and opinions matter, they’re more encouraged to give it their all.
“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going”
Earl Nightingale, author and radio presenter
If you’ve set your company’s vision and mission statements, clearly determining its long-term objectives and everyday ethos, your employees can work towards a common goal. Creating a culture that helps workers feel engaged helps to set clear expectations of their performance. This will aid them in supporting your values and aims.
Extend this clarity to your workers’ defined responsibilities. If they’re given a sense of purpose and a precise goal, they (and, by extension, you) will benefit from renewed focus and a greater commitment to the task(s) in hand. They will also be able to gauge their own performance and are more likely to be fully engaged in their role because they recognise their efforts and achievements are appreciated.
To further reduce ambiguity in the workplace, you could employ the SMART approach to goal setting. This widely-employed system ensures that goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
The first step – ‘specific’ – is identifying what you want to achieve, who will be tasked with reaching that goal and how they will carry out the plan. ‘Measurable’ deals with the quantifiable elements such as costs, time taken, or waste reduction. You could track progress with the use of milestones, task completion percentages, or any benchmark that illustrates their performance.
‘Attainable’ goals are ambitious but rooted in realism. This will keep your employees challenged and motivated with a clear path to meeting the targets. Unrealistic goals can reduce morale and productivity among team members facing impractical aims.
That morale will also sink if workers’ projects aren’t considered ‘relevant’, either to their roles or to the company’s strategy. Without a meaningful outcome, or targets that help your employees to feel their efforts are valued and worthwhile, your culture suffers. Having ‘time-bound’ tasks is self-explanatory and, in reality, is just an addition to the measurables. Setting a point for completion of a task simply sharpens focus, clarifies what the priorities are and aids the tracking of progress.
“Difference is the essence of humanity. The answer to difference is to respect it”
John Hume, politician, campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize recipient
Think hard – does your company culture promote inclusion? In other words, do your employees feel able to contribute to the best of their abilities, amid a respectful and supportive environment? If the answer to one or both of those questions is no, you aren’t getting the best from those you employ.
An inclusive culture in a company sets out a foundation for employees to feel engaged with their work. If your business has barriers that prevent staff members from feeling they have a voice, or that their voice won’t be listened to, they may start to question if they’re truly valued.
Your business will undoubtedly benefit from diversity among its workforce. If your team has a range of contrasting backgrounds and experiences you should reap the benefits in terms of wider perspectives. An organisation that reflects the diverse society in which it exists will have greater innovation and a wider range of contributing factors.
You should be striving to create an inclusive culture with equal opportunities for growth and development at your SME anyway, but if you have a diverse mix in your company, you can better meet the needs and demands of your customers and clients.
If you require help to instil a positive company culture at your business, or identify and resolve a range of shortcomings you may have, speak to Aurelian’s experts today.
We can provide all your human resources needs, without you needing to build and sustain a team in-house. Whether you’re looking for assistance with your recruitment strategies, on- and offboarding, employment law, dispute resolution, payroll or performance management, we have years of expertise and we’re ready to assist you with your HR needs.
Speak to Aurelian today and discover how we can support your business.