5 Ways to Enhance Office Culture
Workplace culture is of the utmost importance in today’s business world. Simply put, when your employees aren’t happy with their work lives, they’re even less productive. According to the American Psychological Association, the United States economy loses $500 billion annually due to work-related stress.
Furthermore, investors and customers alike are caring more about transparency and core values in a business. And people are more likely to be loyal to a brand that not only has good products and services, but a great office culture behind closed doors. In fact, the Chair of the Harvard Business Publishing Company board, Howard H. Stevenson, once said, “Maintaining an effective culture is so important that it, in fact, trumps even strategy.”
Workplace culture embodies the mission and behavior of a business. It consists of the environment business owners and founders cultivate for their staff, and what’s makes the office an enjoyable place to be (or a place that stresses you out). A positive work culture can lead to higher productivity and engagement, better customer service, less employee time off, and higher retention. Here are a few ways to enhance your office culture:
Show Your Appreciation
Employees want to feel appreciated for the work they do, especially when they go above and beyond for a task or project. Making them feel good about their efforts is one of the simplest ways to improve workplace culture. Schedule team meetings and be sure to, at the very least, offer verbal gratitude. Some companies take this a step further by rewarding employee of the week or month, and giving prizes for those awards.
Give Feedback—Without Micromanaging
Strong feedback shouldn’t wait until the end of the year. You should be offering regular feedback and ways for improvement, in addition to complimenting them on things they’re doing great. Keep in mind that feedback meetings shouldn’t be about micromanagement. Micromanagement can hurt company culture, and lead to a high turnover.
Micromanagement is a crippling leadership style in the workplace. It creates a toxic environment that can stifle productivity and make employees feel as though they can’t be themselves or make a normal mistake. However, if you’re the manager, it can be difficult for you to recognize when you may be the problem, especially if you only have the best interests of the company at heart. But the fact is, you should also have the best interests of your staff at heart as well. These micromanagement signs will help you determine if you’re a culprit.
Offer Office Perks
While you may never reach Google’s level of office perks, a little something goes a long way. Office perks are little daily bonuses in the eyes of the employee, who learn to appreciate them and co-align it with your company culture. There are many simple things you can do for office perks:
- Offer free breakfast or lunch in the office once per week
- Set up company happy hours
- Have office snacks in the kitchen (try allowing your team to vote on them)
- Pet friendly workspace
- Free coffee and tea
- Morning and/or post-lunch exercise and meditation classes
Aesthetics also play a huge part in employee satisfaction and morale. A poorly decorated, dark dingy space is not conducive to a productive work environment. Instead, bright colours, plants, motivational images or a custom neon sign, can all easily transform the ambience of a space.
Allow Staff to Learn
Another impressive office perk you can offer your employees is the ability to learn more about other departments, and potentially get involved. This allows them to mix up their schedules and gain a more well-rounded perspective of day-to-day operations. For example, perhaps someone on your marketing team would want to learn more about the ins and outs of website development, like the pros and cons of shared hosting or how to alter alter web pages. Or, perhaps your design team is curious about how your sales team acquires customers.
Evernote’s Officer Training Program is a great example of this. It allows staff to sign up to attend meetings that aren’t their own twice per month. This means that they’ll be able to sit in on conversations outside of their own departments to enable them to learn more about what’s happen outside of their section of the workplace.
Create a Remote Work Program
For many businesses, remote work is an ideal office perk that can enhance company culture. Not only has remote work been proven to increase workplace efficiency, but can also lead to happier employees and lower overhead costs.
IBM was able to launch a remote work program and save $100 million annually. By giving your employees remote work, you’re granting them autonomy, which can be even more ideal than financial perks, as some studies have shown. Your employees want to be shown they are trusted, and granting them independence in the workplace is a great way to do this. Check out this article on how to create a remote work program.
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