Earlier this week we explained the reasons why your company’s culture impacts your brand. A balanced company culture can have a very beneficial impact on your daily operations and the way the average person views your company. Measuring the cultural health of your company is one thing, but where do you go from there. Below we’ll look into some ideas to improve or give your company a cultural makeover.
The first step is to figure out how you want your business to “feel.” Below are a few questions to ask yourself:
- How do you want your company to feel? Fun, creative, open, accepting, respectful, etc?
- How can you reflect you company values in its culture?
- How is information currently distributed in the company and just how does this affect the culture?
- How do you reward or motivate employees now, and how would you like to in the future?
- Does the company give everyone a “voice?” Are employees encouraged to communicate their ideas and views?
These can lead to more questions. To find answers try brainstorming with your co-workers. Listed below are some ideas to get the ball rolling:
Suggestion/Thought box – Giving people a way to share their thoughts, anonymously or not, helps make the culture of a company feel more open. You may learn some important things that need tweaking and may wish to bring them up in companywide meetings.
Empower employees – Give people ownership over their jobs by treating them like peers rather than peons. You can accomplish this by being more transparent; don’t just communicate when you have successes, inform them when things aren’t going perfectly. It will create a team full of mutual support.
Flexible hours – You hired your employees because you have confidence in them to do their job. Permitting them to have somewhat flexible hours shows you trust them to get their work done well and on time. The respect you give them will be reflected in the respect they give you.
Dress code – Have a more laid back dress code. It’s remarkable what allowing people to express themselves can do for a company’s culture. Think about themed days: silly hat day, Hawaiian shirt day, or anything that gets people thinking imaginatively and brings happiness to the day.
Celebrate – You are all part of the same organization and hopefully share the same goals. Celebrate this by having a monthly movie day, a team event after work, or a lunch time game day – something fun that gets the group doing something collectively.
Here are some things companies do to give their culture a playful edge:
- Spontaneous Nerf gun wars
- Painting inspirational quotes on the walls
- Hitting a loud gong when there is a success to let the whole company know
- Foosball tournaments
- Lunchtime Yoga
- Lunchtime Crafting Club
- Monday Mad Libs, whoever wishes to contribute, does, and then the completed Mad Lib is emailed to the company
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