You need a great team working together in a positive, empowering environment for your business to succeed. A strong company culture lays the foundation for success for your employees as well as the company. Creating a culture that rocks can be challenging, but it's definitely worth the effort. Here are three tips to help you on your cultural journey.
First, start by setting the tone from the top down. Make sure your leaders are role models for the type of culture you want to create. Your leaders should be living and breathing the culture you want before you ever talk about it with your employees. Your staff should see your culture and the behaviors you expect from them reflected in your company leaders. If you can't say with certainty that your leaders live out your cultural expectations daily, then don't tell people about the culture you want to create. Nothing will upend a culture initiative faster than leaders who don't model the desired culture.
Next, be open and transparent with your employees. Great communication is necessary to create a great culture. Your employees will feel connected and empowered to do their job well if you're great at it. If you're not good at it, you likely have an engagement issue that may translate into lost productivity, retention issues, and more. But it's not just one-way communication; you need to encourage employees to give feedback and offer suggestions. Employees should feel that they have a voice within your organization, that you care about them. How can you do that? Listen with purpose and intention. Do something with what they tell you, and then communicate what you did. Open, two-way communication is one of the best assets you have to create a culture that rocks!
Finally, make sure everyone is held accountable to the same standards. Everyone means everyone. If your best salesperson just did something that goes against your core values, take action. If you, as a leader, somehow believe you are exempt from the expectations in your culture, you are completely wrong. Whatever you allow will become the norm regardless of what you say in your meetings or on your pretty posters. You can't hold your average employees accountable but give passes to your "high flyers." Set the expectations in your desired culture, and then hold everyone to it.
How do you create a culture that rocks? It's challenging, but it can be done. Starting with these three tips will help get you started on your cultural journey to success. Organizations with great cultures see lower employee turnover, higher levels of employee engagement and satisfaction, and higher productivity levels.
Creating a culture that rocks takes time and effort, but it's worth it.
Ready to start rocking out? Contact our team at crew@purposehq.com for more information about how we can work together to create a culture that rocks!
