4 Steps to Building a Successful Company Culture

Have you ever wondered what actually happens when and employee arrives at work? How would you want them to feel and how would you want them to think about the organisation? It is a fact that how your employees feel about the company reflects directly on you as an employer and the company culture that you have established. The million dollar question is how can you resuscitate a company’s culture?

Well you can at least start off by asking a couple of questions such as:

• Do your employees seem to enjoy the work that they do? This question is significant because employees should not report to work feeling miserable in any way.
• Do you notice a level of accountability and responsibility in your employees? If employees are taking ownership, it signifies that your employees feel connected with the organisation.
• Are your employees sufficiently engaged? If your employees believe that their contribution matters to the organisation, it leads to an increased level of commitment from your employees.
• Do you notice a sense of respect and camaraderie amongst your employees? This is significant because people usually like to be involved and feel good about the fact that their work and word are trusted by the organisation.
• Do you invest in your employees? By amply rewarding and recognising the work of your employees for a job well done indicates that the organisation values their work.

Once you have asked these questions to yourself, you are all set to create a company culture which will give your company a competitive edge. Follow these four steps which will help you build a robust company culture:

1. Formulate your Company’s Mission, Vision, and Values

No company culture can be established overnight. It is a prolonged process that includes setting your company’s mission, vision, and values. The organisation and its executive team need to set time aside and take concerted efforts towards determining these three milestones.

Mission Statement: A company’s mission statement conveys to its customers, employees, and vendors why it is in business. A mission statement needs to be brief.

Vision Statement: A company’s vision statement is what the employees and the organisation aspire to be in future. It needs to project emotion and motivation.

Values: Values convey what the organisation and its employees believe in. It sets the foundation of an organisation’s culture.

Figuring out values can be challenging and this where a lot of organisations give up. Having your values in place will give you your daily action and decision making.

2. Conduct a Culture Survey

A company’s culture involves the engagement of its employees. A company with disengaged employees is likely to cost a company its financial resources, productivity, and morale. The best audience to figure out where your organisation is lagging in the culture segment is to seek the opinion of your employees. Conducting a culture survey may be a great place to start off with. You may ask the following sample questions to your employees in the survey:

• Do you feel that your opinion is valued?
• How many times have your efforts been recognised by your supervisor for a job well done in the last three months?
• Do you have the required tools and resources to do your job well?
• Does your manager or supervisor listen to you?
• Do you feel that the benefits that you receive are fair and marketable?
• Do you feel satisfied with your present job?

Based on how many employees participate in the survey, it will indicate to you if there is a lot of distrust within the employees of your organisation. Trust is one of the key factors contributing towards building a company’s culture. If the employees do not trust you as an organisation, they are not going to follow you or your ideology.  Make use of this survey as an opportunity to build that trust in your employees. Take the help of a third party to conduct the survey and make the survey anonymous for your employees to ensure maximum participation.

After getting the results from your survey, commit to working towards the shortcomings. You employees will feel motivated and encouraged if they see you taking proactive steps towards improving the company’s culture.

A culture survey depicts how and what your employees think, how they feel about the workplace, their job, the co-workers, and their supervisors or managers. Utilise this information to see how the newfound company culture aligns with the present climate.

3. Conduct a Focus Group Survey amongst the Employees of Various Departments

Prior to finalising your organisation’s culture and values, make sure that you seek the input of your employees. This is significant because it is their workplace at the end of the day that will be directly impacted by the decisions that are made. You need to conduct a focus group survey amongst the employees of various departments, job titles, and experience levels. Restrict this survey to just the employees and not managers or supervisors. Take the help of a third party to conduct the survey. Review the mission, vision, and values in this survey.

The results obtained from this focused group survey may be affirming and eye-opening to issues which according to you was a marginal one, but it ranked the highest amongst your employees. After getting the results from the survey, you and your organisation’s executives need to review the feedback received and make the necessary tweaks. Once you finalise the version, you and your management need to walk the talk.

A couple of things that you need to consider as you move ahead:

• Does your organisation have the right kind of leadership team in place that models its values?
• Is your organisation able to attract like-minded, talented employees?
• Does the organisation provide ample opportunities to be involved with its employees?

If the leadership of an organisation has done a good job of hiring some of the best supervisors and employees, the company’s culture should be automatically transparent from the top down.

4. Roll out the Company Culture Aptly

Making the company culture an innate part of an organisation takes more than merely putting up the culture on a poster to be hung in the boardroom or the break area. A company culture impacts all the aspects of an organisation right from the way you conduct performance reviews to the way you acknowledge the people of your organisation. It basically ties into the company’s human resources infrastructure. A lot reflects in the way you hire and fire your employees, and if the compensation and rewards are in line with the organisation’s values.

It is not just enough to attract people to your organisation, but you need to retain them as well and this is where most of the companies fall short. You should not join the bandwagon and instead develop an excellent workforce that will help in accelerating your business and maximise the potential of your employees with your intelligent human resources strategy.