If you’re a business owner and you’re not using your culture and work environment as part of your recruitment and retention strategy, then you’re missing out on something quite big. Nowadays, people have access to a wealth of information and can make better and more educated decisions when it comes to finding the right company for their career aspirations. In addition to salary and other benefits, one crucial factor can make or break their decision: the company’s organizational culture.
What Is Company Culture?
Organizational culture is a system of beliefs and values that govern the way employees act, perform and the habits they develop in the work environment. It affects the way workers interact with each other, with their superiors as well as with their clients, and can be a powerful personality shaper. After all, the workplace is where most of us spend the largest part of our daily lives.
Organizational culture can take many forms. It can present itself as a set of expectations, norms or rules that dictate the general employee behavior. That can refer to work day length, management’s approach to solving various disagreements, communication norms inside the company’s hierarchical structure, and so on.
It all sounds daunting, but there are services, such as Advance Systems that can help you track your employees’ performance and schedules. That way, you can ensure they are aligned with your company’s norms and values.
Why Should You Care?
As a business owner and manager, you need to be aware of the existing culture in your organization and regularly assess it. Besides this set of rules and norms, what are the core values of the company and your core values as a leader? Do they align? Do they reflect in the norms that are now part of your workplace? These are all questions you need to ask yourself periodically to check if what you’ve worked on so hard is still in place.
Besides studying yourself, you should also make it a habit of studying your employees’ behaviors. Try these exercises both alone and with a few of your trusted employees, and then compare them. What does the way your employees act say about your current company culture? List a few typical behavior patterns and go through them, one by one. Is the current company’s culture different from what you envisioned? What were you aiming for and what did this vision consist of in the beginning? If your current company culture does not reflect your values anymore, how can you make the transit?
- How Company Culture Impacts Employee Retention?
If you’ve thoroughly assessed your business culture’s situation and are still not sure of whether it’s deviated from the plan, there are a few red flags that can tell you if it’s going downhill.
A clear sign may be a lack of motivation and obvious disinterest in the work your employees are doing. Whenever people are unhappy, it shows, and it doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out something’s not quite right.
More than that, employees do not work well together anymore, meaning that their productivity suffers. They miss deadlines, do sloppy work, and don’t care about the feedback they receive.
The biggest red flag of all, however, is when people start leaving. If you’ve reached this critical point, it’s clear you need to change your company’s culture, and you need to do it now!
Company culture can play a huge role in your business’ success. If you use it wisely, it can act like the social control system you need to reinforce healthy and productive workplace behaviors. It can also help you establish an environment of professionalism where people can thrive through their work.