A positive workplace can make a world of difference to your team’s overall performance and wellbeing. As an employer, your employees are the lifeblood of the business – they represent your brand and work hard every day to ensure that the business continues in operation and grows steadily. If you want to optimize the value of your business to ensure that you’re doing everything you can to make sure that it’s developing in a positive way. One key factor in optimizing your business value is by keeping your employees happy by boosting workplace culture. From here, staff retention and loyalty will filter into other areas such as customer engagement and retention. When it comes to making your next business-related decision such as redirecting strategic direction or making the decision to sell, you want your business to have an optimized value so your hard work won’t go to waste.
From boosting productivity to attracting top talent to further expansion and growth, there is so much your business can gain from a motivated workforce. Fortunately, even the most toxic of workplace environments are salvageable. It’s never too late to mend fences with your people.
We’ve compiled some time-tested strategies to help you reinvent your workplace to meet the needs of your employees and boost morale.
1. Establish a Culture of Trust
Do you lead by personal example? Are your employees confident enough to reach out to you without fear of blowback? Do they trust you to respect their confidentiality? If the answer to these questions is yes, your workplace is healthy. If not, rethink things because trust is delicate ─ once broken, it’s tough to put back together.
Here are some excellent tips you can put to use to inspire a culture of trust and reliance:
- Avoid gossip. A gossip can turn into a slandering rumor before you realize it, invading people’s privacy, and orchestrating outbreaks of negativity. It’s best to avoid it at all costs. While it’s important to establish a bond with your co-workers, avoid negative discourse to ensure that you maintain a positive workplace. Negativity can spread quickly throughout an office, so be careful of how to choose to voice your opinions around the workplace.
- Be fair and consistent. If you’re trusting one team member to get the job done, offer others the same courtesy as well. A culture of “equal opportunity” fosters growth and keeps workplace envy and politics in check.
- Share information, wins, and opportunities. For example, say you met a client – rather than keeping the meeting a secret, share what you’ve learned with your team. Making people a part of your success helps you grow together as a company.
- Don’t forget non-verbal communication. In today’s fast-paced corporate culture, a lot of communications are non-verbal. Your people notice your muffled grunts and popping forehead veins. Try to talk with a smile on your face to create an atmosphere of positivity – you want to be able to spread positivity and create a work environment that makes employees feel safe and secure.
- Low-trust environments typically have a lot of blaming and shaming. If something goes wrong, refrain from pointing fingers at each other. Instead, take responsibility and fix things as a cohesive workforce.
2. Improve Training Strategies
Many companies and organizations have recently come together to retrain their employees to fight racial profiling. However, affecting real lasting change is in the fine print. A single day of training won’t provide real value. You’ll need robust training programs to make a real difference.
Here are some excellent ideas to promote employee development:
- Internal training. In-house training programs are an excellent way to empower employees to learn on the job. Hire workplace consultants familiar with your organization’s goals and methods to facilitate employee promotions.
- Bring External Training to the Floor: If you have an external training program, make sure those who take it share their experiences with the rest of your team. This ensures a homogenized output of something that’s designed to help only a few select people.
- Promotions: Nothing motivates an employee to grow like a promotion. However, make sure the promotion is merited. The right way of doing this is to arrange mentoring sessions for potential candidates to gauge their temperament and competency before giving them the good news.
- Praise: Employees need praise every now and again – it will help motivate them to improve and develop within their role.
3. Create a sense of belonging
One of the most important responsibilities you have as a boss is to make your people feel at home through shared experiences. This approach blurs the lines between work and personal life and makes your team feel like they’re part of something bigger.
Creating a sense of belonging doesn’t have to break the bank. You don’t have to set aside a budget every week for lavish parties or expensive lunch breaks.
Sometimes, little things like going out for coffee as a group or hosting a dinner after work can make a difference. When workers become friends, it changes the whole vibe of a company. As a result, workplace confidence shines, boosting individual drive and productivity.
4. Don’t Mistake Perks for Culture.
Table tennis tables, free coffee, and breakout rooms are great perks. But remember: They don’t substitute for culture.
While perks are great to replenish energies, they may not motivate people to go the extra mile for their companies. It’s like parenting. You have to offer more than your money to your kids to make them realize your love.
Creating a genuine atmosphere in the form of inspiring and helping team leaders is a great way to imbibe company values and beliefs.
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5. Hold People Accountable
While positive workplace culture is about making you feel independent and empowered, it shouldn’t come at the cost of compromising your company’s core values.
Positivity is a two-way street. Hold employees accountable who take things for granted. This sends the message that your company’s promises and values are more than decoration.
Swallow the bitter pill of firing employees that show a pattern of negative behavior, no matter how valuable they are. When you draw the line at intolerable offenses, such as bullying and sexual harassment, people respect you for your bold fairness.
Final ThoughtsCreating a positive workplace culture takes time. You won’t develop trust with your people overnight. Play the long game. Make lasting positive changes, and it will pay dividends. You’ll be setting yourself up for long-term success in regard to your business’s overall value. When it comes time to make a decision that will affect your business, it’s highly recommended to seek out a business valuation from Valuations QLD for a quality report on your business. In the meantime, follow these quick tips on how to improve your workplace culture.