3 Keys to Healthier Worklpace Culture

Healthy teams are indicative of a healthy organization. Most importantly, organizations with healthy cultures have the best chance of survival. The ROI for building a healthy culture includes increased employee retention rates, increased productivity, and best of all, mitigating business risk, and increased profitability. When considering the great benefits of a healthy culture within your organization, the next question may likely be how and where do you start with establishing a healthy culture? Glad you asked.

First, get clear on the vision. Consumed with the day-to-day responsibilities of leading teams can result in employees being busy 8 hours a day but not working towards a common goal. Clarity around vision and core mission is supremely important in the context of company culture and sustainability.

 Next, begin encouraging adherence to an established set of values. Encouraging agreement does not mean encouraging everyone to act the same way. Instead, once team members are clear on the vision, establish clarity around the company core values you want your employees to embody. Establishing clarity on company vision is not a one-time deal but rather something that will have to be consistently and often demonstrated and reiterated by company leadership.

Thirdly, encourage collaboration. One-man shows generally do not last because burnout is common in such scenarios. When it comes to building a healthy culture within your organization, encouraging collaboration is likely one initiative that will be reluctantly received, but the payoff is invaluable. Teams that do well collaborating are more likely to come up with the best ideas. In the global marketplace innovation is the lifeline to the longevity of a brand. So what do you do if you are a solopreneur? You build community. Sometimes that community will come by way of the audience you invite and whose voice you use to offer feedback. Other times, the collaboration will happen through outsourcing experts to handle specific projects, processes, or areas of business for you. Whichever model of collaboration you use, it is important to invite diversity in perspective to improve business outcomes. 

There are 3 key questions to start with that can offer you the clarity needed to get your organization on the path to a healthier organization. 

Question 1: What is our “why”? What is the why behind our brand? Why do we even exist? Clarity around the “why” is important. Although every department will have a “what”, clarity around the motivation will help to ensure all departments and efforts are working towards the same goal. Unity in mission helps to increase profitability and limit waste; waste of time (productivity), waste of human resources, and waste of financial resources.

Question 2: How do we demonstrate the “why”? This question of how to behave can be informed by company core values. It essentially asks, how do you behave as a brand? What is acceptable behavior and what is not? What is culturally acceptable and encouraged behavior around communication? How do you treat customers? 

Question 3: What is our business? Knowing what your business does may seem like a no-brainer, although in many cases, it is not. As companies grow, the activities of teams can exist with so many layers that the leader no longer even knows what they are paying people to do. Being unaware of what staff is doing is a widely overlooked vulnerability when companies are in the black. Not seeing a quantifiable impact is most often how issues of this nature go undetected for long periods. Doing the work of getting your leadership team on the same page to maintain a pulse on what teams are up to may seem like a laborious process. Establishing clear directives is a process that can protect the bottom line in the long run and give you the best chance to ensure your teams are working with a unified approach.

The path to establishing a healthy culture is simple, but it is not easy. Our team at The Link Group can help.