Your company’s mission statement, core values, policies, and goals define your company culture. It is also your approach to how you handle employee, customer, and vendor relations. It is often something you feel, even if you don’t work there. For example, if you walk into an office, you get a sense of their culture from the start. Were you greeted warmly? Also, did you feel comfortable? Have you ever visited a business where you felt uncomfortable?
How do you treat your employees? How do you make decisions? Also, do your workers treat each other well? These are examples of company culture.
What type of company culture or values are important to you? Furthermore, what type of culture do you want to develop?
It shapes the working environment. Company culture can also affect employee morale, productivity, and retention. It is how the company views itself and would like to present itself to the outside world. Your company culture is essential to your success or failure.
For a small business, it is even more important to have a great company culture. Recruiting and keeping top employees can be difficult if you don’t have the right business culture.
A positive company culture can attract top talent and foster innovation. A negative culture can lead to high turnover rates and low employee engagement. Additionally, a strong company culture can help differentiate your business from competitors and establish a strong brand identity.
What Makes a Positive Company Culture?
When you have high morale, your company culture is usually good. Engaged workers feel like the company in which they work is theirs.
They actively look for new ways to make their job or the company better. They also want to improve the workplace, improve productivity, and increase profits.
Additionally, they will achieve their goals. They want to be the best. They will do this even if it is not their job duty or in their job description.
Values
Having a positive company culture is more than offering employee perks. It is when behaviors, systems, and practices, all guided by a central set of values are all aligned.
It is also about the values you set for positive relations with your workers, customers, and vendors. They walk the talk. For example, does your company state they offer a work/life balance? How do you give them this balance? Remote work? Limited overtime?
When you say you offer certain benefits, make sure your workers can use them.
Hiring Top Employees and Leaders
Have you ever worked for a company where a manager makes fun of an employee for his or her beliefs, thoughts, etc.? If you have a bad leader or a divide between your management and staff, you have a problem with company culture. Also, bad leadership traits such as micromanaging, bullying, and distrust of staff will contribute to a negative workplace culture.
Can your team take risks or are they punished for doing so? Furthermore, are they held accountable for their successes and failures? How can they grow? Your company culture is built on the way leaders manage and interact with employees. Ensure you hire top leaders with great leadership skills. They will help hire great employees.
Recognize differences and diversity too. For instance, a diverse group of employees helps your company grow with differing ideas and opinions.
Give Top Customer Service Solutions
Customer satisfaction should be your number one priority for your small business. Every employee should be trained to handle customer complaints properly and offer solutions. The more you train your workforce, the better they will be at handling customer issues.
Also, if you are hiring unskilled workers, offer more training to them. Implementing a great culture will grow your customer base. Great workers want to exceed customer expectations. Customer service skills are vital to effectively running any product or service business.
Offer Employee Involvement Strategies
Involving your team in decision-making efforts can increase your engagement. Listen to what your team has to say and apply those changes if they are good suggestions. The more your workers are involved in your business, the more engaged they are.
How can you involve your employees more? Some companies have suggestion boxes, or the manager of a department will delegate someone to run a project or gather input. There are many ideas of how you can involve your employees, but the most important tool is listening to what your employees have to say. Great employees like being involved.
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The Advantages of Being a Small Business
There are many examples in which you can find small and mid-size businesses with great company cultures. It may be harder to compete with larger companies, but your small business also has more control.
As a small business, your workers may have to work longer hours or may not have all the technology or tools larger companies have in place to perform faster. There are some tools and technology platforms you can offer in your small business. For example, offering a time clock app like ezClocker can help ensure good communication and a streamlined process in terms of timekeeping and time off requests.
You also have the power to add more perks and get more involvement from employees. As mentioned above, if you say you have perks, make sure your staff can use them.
Great workers want to know why you are doing what you are doing and where you are going with the company. They want to know how they can help you get there.
Benefits of Having a Great Company Culture
There are many benefits of implementing a positive company culture, such as:
Increased Employee Satisfaction
Have you ever been satisfied where you worked? What made you like where you work? Was it the perks, the management, or the company itself? Most likely it was because of the culture.
Higher Retention Rates
As previously discussed, employees want to work somewhere with a great culture. They like the sense of belonging. Also, they want to know they have a future with the company. If you are a top employer in your area, hiring becomes easier. Your employees tell everyone they know if they like their job or not.
Improved Productivity
People who are happy work harder and smarter. They want you to be proud of them and their work.
Company culture can help productivity by increasing employee motivation and engagement. It also fosters a sense of teamwork and collaboration. Workers feel valued and supported. This can lead to improved job satisfaction, better job performance, and increased productivity.
Better Communication and Collaboration
When your company culture is good, everyone communicates and collaborates well. New ideas are respected. There are very few issues between workers.
Improved Brand Image and Reputation
A positive company culture can improve your brand by increasing employee morale, productivity, and customer satisfaction. When employees feel valued and engaged, they are more likely to provide exceptional customer service. They promote the brand through positive word-of-mouth.
Positive Impact on the Bottom Line
As your productivity and customer loyalty increases, you will get more sales. Also, you will not have to spend so much on marketing efforts. Word-of-mouth will sell your business.
Importance of Having a Mission and Core Values
Define your mission and your core values as a company. Know what type of culture you want. Recognize that your team is the one to make it happen. Also, communicate with them early on. They need to know exactly what is expected and what they will get in return.
As a small business, you have an opportunity to make changes as you go. You can easily correct your mistakes which larger companies may not be able to do.
Hire the right people from the start to make it happen. If you have a bad apple in your company, get rid of them quickly. Diversify your people as well. Bring in different personalities and different cultures. Find people who think differently than you. They will help you come up with different solutions to problems.
Most importantly, think about what you could do now to get the company culture you want. Regardless of whether you have two or twenty employees, your values and your mission should be known by everyone in your company. Building your company culture is one of the most important things you can do for your small business.
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