A healthy company culture helps employees feel confident and valued, and employees who feel like this are more likely to be productive with their work. So, when it comes to your efforts to maintain workplace productivity, company culture is an important – but sometimes overlooked – factor.
To help inspire employees to be more productive in the workplace, here are six easy steps for building a healthy company culture that will spur growth:
1. Maintain a Respectful Workplace Environment
The environment where you and your employees work is a vital element in keeping your company culture in check, and the most important element of a healthy work environment is respect.
In a respectful workplace environment, all employees are treated fairly and with the same amount of consideration. Also, in such an environment, people aim to collaborate and be supportive of each other. Furthermore, there is no discrimination, and everyone has an equal opportunity of having his or her opinions heard.
This is especially important when it’s time to solve problems. When everyone’s opinions are respected, people with solutions are more likely to speak up when an issue arises. This includes people who’d remain silent if they thought their opinions wouldn’t matter.
Once respect becomes an integral part of everyday life in your company, productivity will thrive.
2. Set Clear Values
Once everyone is aware of the company’s values, it’ll be easier to maintain the culture you want.
If you value honesty, teamwork, and openness, practice them regularly. Make sure this practice comes from the top. People are more likely to follow a set of values if they see the leadership implementing the same values. For example, if you value new ideas, encourage people to come to you when they want to make improvements and implement some new trends.
Once you’ve decided on the company’s values, just make sure all organization levels follow them – both the managers and other employees.
3. Make Everyone Accountable
Keeping track of everyone’s time and attendance with the right time card calculator is vital. You’ll gain the knowledge of who worked on what, when, and for how long. This information will improve everyone’s accountability and help in maintaining a healthy work culture.
- When you know what employees worked on, you have a better understanding of what remains to be done for the future.
- When you know when employees worked on something, it gets easier to establish functional schedules.
- When you know how long it took everyone to finish their assignments, you’ll know whether everyone has fulfilled their daily (usually eight hours per day) and weekly requirements (usually 40 hours per week).
This information helps keep everyone accountable for their actions, and when everyone is accountable for their actions, everyone is equal. And when employees feel equal, their teamwork is at its best giving companies the best chance to spur growth.
4. Improve Communication
Communication is key for a successful business and a healthy work routine. It solves a lot of problems and builds teamwork. To make sure your workplace communication is up to par, you have to:
- Encourage giving feedback. When people know their work is appreciated, they are likely to continue being productive.
- Set clear, realistic goals, because people who know what they should achieve and why, are more likely to pursue their tasks. Also, encouraging people to talk about the goals they have to achieve, and the successes they have along the way, helps keep motivation high.
- Install a fair, encouraging, and relevant collaborative environment. When people feel safe to ask questions, they’ll be less likely to make mistakes in their work.
- Listen to your employees’ concerns. When employees feel that their voices are heard, they’ll feel more respected and be more likely to work hard. Empathize with their concerns and listen carefully to what they have to say. Then, provide an opinion or supportive advice.
5. Engage Employees
Engaged employees feel devoted to their work in an emotional and psychological way. They are less likely to be absent from work and more likely to be productive in general. Hence, engaging your employees at work is key to a company interested in growth.
To understand whether your employees feel engaged with their work, simply ask them. You can create a survey or poll for this purpose. It’s best to make the survey anonymous to ensure people answer honestly. You can add more specific questions to clarify how to improve engagement if it turns out to be inadequate.
Hire effective and positive managers, who have the ability to inspire their teams. Then, provide them with resources that will help them hire the right people for the team. In addition, include new exciting challenges, to inspire your employees. Just make sure these challenges are realistic and feasible in terms of each employee’s skills.
When deciding on the goals your company wants to reach, involve the people you expect to reach those goals. The employees know best what goals they can attain and when they can attain them.
5. Put an Emphasis on Trust
Trust is the most important element of a great team. When team members trust each other, as well as trust their executives and managers, your company’s prospects for success grow.
In a company that prioritizes trust, employees can delegate tasks and be sure they’ll be finished on time. When working on a team project, they can count on others to do their share of the work.
It’s also vital that employees trust their leadership – trust that they’ll take the employees and the company to the promised goals.
When someone makes a mistake, it’s best that you listen to his or her side of the story before jumping to conclusions. If you always make assumptions about why an employee performed subpar, you’re more likely to inspire wariness than trust. Instead, be patient, tolerable, and listen to the employee’s side of the story. When you show you trust your employees, they’ll be more likely to
trust you.
Conclusion
Healthy company culture leads to satisfied employees, and satisfied employees are more likely to be productive and help spur company growth. You just have to know what steps to take.
First, it’s important to maintain a respectful environment, one where people harbor communication and trust. It’s also important to keep everyone aware of the set of values the company operates on. An employee who is engaged in the success of the company is more likely to contribute to that success – so, aim to engage your employees.
It’s also important to keep everyone accountable – an attendance tracker can make everything in the company transparent, with data showing when, for how long, and what was worked on. Accountable employees feel that they’re equal with everyone else, and thus, are more likely to be productive.
About the Author
Marija Kojic is a productivity enthusiast who works at Clockify. She frequently writes about business and productivity topics, and she’s always on the lookout for the next best productivity hack.
