It is a common misconception that work culture is bound to the walls of an office - that it’s created by providing fancy coffee or hosting weekly happy hours.
Work culture is so much more than that. It’s that thing you feel every day when you walk into the office, log into your computer, or sit in a meeting that makes you want to be there - or not, in the case of toxic work environments. It’s the behaviors, attitudes, values, and customs of a group of people.
Given that work culture is something intangible and abstract, it’s common for leaders to feel unsure about how exactly to go about creating it, shaping it, and maintaining it.
Fortunately, we now have an idea of what exactly leaders need to do thanks to Adecco’s study, Resetting Normal: Defining the New Era Of Work 2021. In it, 14,300 respondents across 25 countries were asked, what would you say are particularly effective ways of maintaining a strong team/company culture in the new working world? Here’s what they said:
Undoubtedly, these things take more time and effort to make a reality than hosting a happy hour. But in the long run, the benefits of doing so far outweigh and outlast those costs. So, let’s review in more detail what you can start doing today to create and maintain a stronger, more positive work culture for everyone.
In order to create a work culture where everyone feels safe sharing their opinions and ideas and can show their true selves and personalities, there needs to be psychological safety. Michigan State University explains that in a psychologically safe workplace, “people are not rejected for being their full selves, and mistakes are not often held against them. Employees also feel safe to take risks, ask other team members for help, and more easily discuss difficult problems and issues.”
As you can imagine, the benefits of creating psychological safety are more significant than a stronger work culture. According to research by Accenture, the benefits also include:
Team meetings are an opportunity for you as a leader to engage employees, create transparency, promote collaboration, get aligned, and strengthen your team/company culture. The reality, though, is that too many meetings in the workplace fall short of their potential. For instance, Otter.ai found that half of the 62 meetings employees attend per month on average are a complete waste of time, while executives say 67% of the meetings they attend “are a complete failure in communicating the sole purpose of conducting them.”
Despite the prevalence of ineffective meetings, Adecco’s study clearly shows that people still believe team meetings can have a positive impact on a team/company culture. The key is to rethink your approach and implement small changes that together make a big difference to the effectiveness of your meetings. Those changes include:
According to the over 14,000 respondents in Adecco’s study, flexibility is the third most effective way to maintain a strong team/company culture. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given how significantly the events of the last several years have altered employees’ expectations, priorities, and values. Today, people want to work for employers who understand that work-life balance isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have, and as such, gives them a fair degree of autonomy over when they work, where they work, and how they do their work.
In fact, a flexible working arrangement was the third-most-popular reason people had hunted for a job recently or were planning to hunt for one. It was also the reason 43% of 10,000 respondents to a Gartner study said they were able to achieve greater productivity at work in 2021.
Praise, recognition, and gratitude in the workplace shouldn’t only be reserved for occasions when employees exceed their performance goals or meet financial targets. You should also offer praise and recognition when employees behave in a way that aligns with your desired culture. When you do, especially in a public forum such as a staff meeting or team Slack chat, it not only acts as positive reinforcement for the individual but also makes it abundantly clear to everyone else what your expectations are and what success looks like in your desired work culture.
Celebrating success with your team has the same effect that giving public recognition does. It not only makes people feel valued and seen, but it also sends the message to everyone else that this is something we’re proud of and want to achieve more like it.
The best way to ensure these types of celebrations contribute to a positive work culture is to ask employees what milestones, big or small, they believe are worthy of celebrating and involve them when deciding how to celebrate those milestones. Also, make your team’s successes known to those in senior leadership so they can reinforce the importance of their contributions and how much their efforts were valued.
If you want to maintain a healthy and strong work culture, Adecco respondents say that you need to provide employees with the physical and mental health benefits and support they need.
A study by BlueCross Minnesota backs this up, as it found “a strong tie between positive culture ratings and the support employees receive from their employers through benefits and programs. Providing employees with resources to pursue a healthier lifestyle leads to increased productivity, a more stable workforce, and happier workers on the job and at home. Employees who had the greatest number of programs available in the workplace (15-18 options) reported a 35% higher satisfaction rating for their work and home life.”
The final way to maintain a strong work culture, according to Adecco respondents, is to cast a vision and create a shared sense of purpose. When you cast a vision, specifically regarding culture, you articulate what your culture looks like today, what you want it to look like in the future, and how you’re going to make that a reality. Not only does this information make it abundantly clear what exactly it is you are all working towards, but it also makes people feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves, which can lead to a greater sense of accountability and purpose.
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