Constructing a team is a two-way process. Your employees use their talents and abilities to move the organization forward while the company agrees to pay them for their time and effort.
Successfully supporting a team in a hybrid setting requires emotional, intellectual, and physical support.
You can create a positive work environment and make employees feel valued by doing simple things.
With that in mind, here are the twelve main factors to consider when developing your company culture:
1. Prioritize onboarding and training
Not so anymore. There was a time when starting a new job meant doing the rounds of the office, learning where the stationery cupboard is located and feverishly trying to learn all your new colleagues’ names. Nowadays, it’s not like that anymore.
But for those starting their new jobs remotely, onboarding can feel daunting. If done poorly, it can impact retention.
In fact, new-hires are likely to experience 20% employee turnover within the first 45 days of employment. Only 59% of Australian knowledge workers feel their organization has onboarded them well.
The first two weeks are crucial for an employee to set up a positive work environment.
If you want to know how to get the most out of Slack, just ask Katie Burke, Chief People Officer at HubSpot. “We use Slack to actually nudge people throughout their training and remind them of all the reasons they joined,” says Katie. Team leaders customize a bot to deliver exactly what they want new starters to know and when.
A Slack notification can remind new employees of important first-day materials, connect them to employee resource groups, and give them a heads-up on upcoming HubSpot activities after they have settled in.
Ultimately, managers need to create opportunities to help get newbies through the awkward initiation phase and help them understand their role in the company. Some strategies include:
- Introducing a buddy system or internal mentors
- Sharing clear expectations around behavioral standards and performance expectations.
- Ask for feedback on the onboarding experience, ideally within the first month.
- Educate them on workplace safety and codes of conduct
- Clarify how you can work with them as a manager.
2. Help your employees find a comfortable work environment
Do you remember back in March 2020 when we suddenly had to start working from our kitchen tables? Wherever your employees are working, they need to feel empowered and comfortable to do their best work.
This means helping them to create home offices and workspaces that are comfortable and free of distractions. Remember, employees will be more productive in an environment that is conducive to concentration and focus.
Hybrid workplaces
If your team is coming into a physical office space regularly, focus on making the space comfortable and productive.
This encompasses everything from ergonomic furniture to temperature-regulated interiors.
Employees who have access to adjustable standing desks and well-positioned computer screens are less likely to experience pain, and more likely to have positive emotional well-being and focus.
Remote workplaces
If your employees are working from home, you may want to provide them with a stipend to buy home office equipment. You may also want to give them a self-assessment to do, as well as resources on ergonomic safety.
Not only is it important to consider your employees’ physical comfort when working from home, but it is also essential to think about their mental wellbeing. Working from home can be both isolating and can make it difficult to draw a line between their home and work lives.
The Australian Productivity Commission has suggested that companies set up an Employee Assistance Program or have a designated contact person that employees can talk to about any concerns they have with working from home.
3. Conduct regular check-ins
It is not surprising that people who like coming to work do a better job. Many people believe that creating a positive work environment for a team is complicated, but this is not the case.
Nearly half of all remote workers believe that the best managers are the ones who check in with them frequently.
In addition to regular 1:1 chats, remote employees need to feel supported. This is especially important if they are used to being able to ask quick questions in person.
It’s better to communicate too much than too little, and you should use tools that make it easy to have conversations.
If you want your team’s input on a decision, you can send them a quick informal message asking for their opinion.
After showing your employees that you care, follow up with them to ensure they are feeling supported. These little actions can go a long way in boosting productivity, no matter where your employees are located.
4. Encourage team collaboration and communication
As a leader, it’s your responsibility to ensure that team members feel included.
You cannot always be in the same room to create an inclusive atmosphere, which is where technology can help. A few ways you can do that include:
- Using dedicated channels for new projects
- Including coworkers in appropriate email chains
- Making team priorities easily accessible, like pinning them to the dedicated Slack channel.
Communication that is simple, straightforward, and honest will build the foundation for a team. It will also create a sense of community that will contribute to the success of the group. Plus, it can make new hires feel supported, even when the management team isn’t available.
5. Facilitate opportunities for learning
When it comes to setting teams up for success, it’s more important to focus on the long-term things that will make them more productive.
Employees will perform better when a company is a learning organization that promotes professional growth.
Giving employees informal learning opportunities and access to knowledge sharing is key to preventing lost productivity. A company can save millions by ensuring that employees have the information they need to do their jobs.
6. Build shared values
The foundation of a good corporate culture is built on shared values and employees that live those values.
A company’s core values are the guiding principles that dictate how employees should interact with one another, as well as how they can expect to be treated. These values represent what is most important to the organization as a whole.
It is important to not only create top-down values, but also to give your team an opportunity to help create the company’s culture values.
The values of your company should be living and dynamic ideals that your team members believe in, just like your company itself.
Sometimes when a company grows, it needs to rethink or refresh its values.
A “values refresh” is a good way to change your company’s values, depending on where your company is at. A few years ago, the company Asana did a values refresh.
7. Invest in diversity, inclusion, and belonging
Organizational culture includes making sure team members feel like they are part of the team. This starts with diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
Having a workforce that includes people from a variety of backgrounds isn’t just the morally right thing to do, it also gives your team an edge over the competition.
A study found that businesses with a more diverse workforce are more innovative and make better decisions that lead to increased profitability.
So, how can you invest in diversity? There are a few great ways to embed diversity into your current culture, including:
8. Inclusive hiring and onboarding practices
Begin creating a diverse culture by training your hiring managers to create an inclusive environment during the hiring process.
The goal is to bring in candidates from groups that are not well represented and to make sure that the experience for all candidates is one that is welcoming and inclusive.
It is important that your human resources and talent acquisition teams are advocates for diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This means that they should be involved in every stage of the hiring and onboarding process.
9. Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)
ERGs are support groups for underrepresented groups and allies that promote a sense of community and belonging.
Typically, employee resource groups are set up at the company level, but they are usually led by team members who want to shape workplace culture.
Real talk events
To make your team feel at home and like they are a part of the family, be sure there is a safe place for them to be their true selves at work.
At Asana, they host events called “real talk” to discuss hard topics that might make people uncomfortable, like experiences with identity and workplace challenges. These conversations allow team members to be honest and open about who they are.
Inclusive spaces
Make sure your team members feel comfortable in your space.
This can include dedicated mother’s rooms for working moms, prayer rooms, restrooms that are not segregated by gender, and accessibility for people with different kinds of disabilities.
10. Ground your culture in mutual trust
An inclusive culture must have trust at its center.
In order for employees to be successful, they need to feel safe to experiment and take risks. It’s okay if they fail occasionally, as long as they learn from their mistakes and keep moving forward.
A key element of developing your company’s culture is creating an environment where all employees feel welcome and encouraged to share their ideas and thoughts, regardless of their title, team, or length of time with the company.
To support mutual trust, create clear avenues for team members to engage and be honest. There are several ways you can build this into your company culture:
Hold open forums with company leadership
One way to show your team members that you trust them is to provide access to company leaders and ask questions that are on their mind. This way, team members feel valued and like their opinions matter. Additionally, it creates an open and trusting environment where employees feel comfortable asking questions and offering suggestions.
If you want to build trust with your employees, you should show that you’re open to answering their questions. This could involve bringing in your executive team or doing monthly Q&A sessions with different company leaders.
Solicit feedback at every level
If you want to be open with your team, you have to be willing to listen to their feedback.
Disagreement and constructive criticism are actually key to good team collaboration. Our article will teach you how to give and take constructive feedback in order to build closer connection with your team members.
Increase visibility across projects, processes, and decisions
Sometimes, team members just want to stay up to date on what is happening or why a decision was made.
Keep information public or share decision in a central place whenever possible. For example, at Asana they use our own platform to stay informed and share the big picture with each other.
11. Distribute responsibility where appropriate
One way to build trust is to give team members control over some of the decision-making process.
Giving your teammates responsibility will make them feel like valued contributors rather than cogs in a machine.
12. Increase clarity, reduce silos
A clear working environment is important for a good company culture.
There is often a lack of communication between work teams which makes it difficult to know what needs to be done. Without a clear understanding of the goals, it can feel like you’re not making any progress.
If you want your employees to be motivated, make sure their daily work is connected to the company’s goals.
Only 26 percent of workers understand how their work relates to company goals, according to recent research.
This is because having goals in a slide deck or spreadsheet that gets checked quarterly is not a strong enough connection to regular, daily work.
Instead of trying to increase motivation, provide clarity by tracking company goals where work happens.
Make sure to find a goal management software that will connect the daily work of your team to the projects they are working on. In this way, team members will be able to see which goals they are working towards and how they are contributing.
Positive culture starts with commitment
Constructing a positive organizational culture requires commitment and time investment, but the benefits of a strong culture can allow your employees to be more productive and effective in their roles.
The success of a team depends on the culture within the team, the type of work environment, and the relationships between team members.
If you’re just getting started, the tips above can help you build a strong foundation for a great organizational culture. Keep in mind that your team members will help shape company culture too. When in doubt, be honest and transparent.