Step back and check in on how your employees are doing, learn what they care about, and discover what helps them stay engaged in their work.
It goes without saying that most leaders want productive employees who care about their work and about the organization at large. But all too often, leadership is so focused on outcomes that they lose sight of how to reach those goals – the proverbial “missing the forest for the trees,” if you will.
If this sounds familiar, it’s time to step back and check in on how your employees are doing, learn what they care about, discover what helps them stay engaged in their work, and ask what they need more of – in a word, it’s time to think about your company culture.
Company culture. “Company culture” is becoming more and more relevant in business circles. For example, in 2019, business publications referenced the idea 500,000 times. But by 2021, that count had soared to more than 2 million!
The idea behind the phrase revolves around shared values and group attitudes in the workplace. In fact, company culture is the collective beliefs employees share about their individual roles, their overall value in the big picture, and how they view the company’s goals at large.
These factors might seem like a moot point when it comes to productivity and profit, but consider these facts:
- The average person spends 90,000 hours of their life at work.
- Actively engaged employees are 13 percent more productive than disengaged employees.
- Employee disengagement can result in trillions of dollars in profit loss.
The numbers don’t lie. Company culture and employee engagement are concepts worth looking into!
Creating a positive company culture. Fortunately, there are some simple strategies team leaders can use to give the company’s culture a boost:
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Conduct a “listening tour.” This is a simple act that goes a long way. Team members often wish that management would ask about their ideas, observations they’ve made, and things they wish to see happening within the organization. Why not schedule an annual check-in?
This gesture also adds a human touch to the corporate landscape. In fact, make it a regular habit to ask how your team members are doing. Modeling empathy and so-called “soft skills” in workplace communication can have a lasting impact on employee morale and productivity in general. -
Show, don’t tell. As a leader within the organization, you set the tone for your team and how they function. Take some time to think about a company culture that you yourself would thrive in. In fact, think about how you operated before taking on a management role. Make a list of what you valued in your supervisors and team leaders at the time. Then, embody those traits.
Living out your goal for the workplace atmosphere you want to create will set the stage for others to follow in your footsteps. - Invest in your team. As a consultant, I get excited when team leaders reach out to schedule one of our workshops for their teams! This act demonstrates the leader’s desire to empower employees to use their own critical thinking skills for solving organizational problems and designing new, innovative solutions for workplace challenges. When leaders set aside time for their team to hone their day-to-day best practices, it shows that management wants to help everyone improve and grow. Team members receive the message that they are valued and that the company wants to invest in them.
As a leader, you have a lot of responsibility to think about the big picture. But taking time to focus on the process of reaching your organization’s goals is also a key component of successfully reaching those goals. By setting out to strategically improve your company culture, you will ensure positive outcomes for yourself and for your team for years to come.
Sarah R. Adams-Slominski, M.A. is an executive consultant for Hurley Write, Inc. and the co-host of The Writing Docs podcast. Connect with her on LinkedIn. For more information, visit HurleyWrite.com.
