Corporate culture remains an intriguing part of running a business. While it can’t be measured, it can be identified and acted upon to change destructive behaviors. Business or corporate culture has an impact on how the office performs and what kind of people thrive in it. Running a business is tough enough without wondering if your people will behave or if you’re hiring the right talent in the first place.
“No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” – Jack Welsh
Unfortunately, much like anything else in business, it can fail. A poor or failing company culture can result in weak productivity, high turnover rate, low morale, disengaged employees and generally disgruntled crew. Here are a few signs that your corporate culture needs work.
1- More people are merely managing instead of leading
As your business grows, people from within the company will inevitably be promoted to management positions. Management positions aren’t just for people who have years of experience, they’re for people who can lead others to achieve their full potential. Managers not there to just give orders, they’re there to give the benefit of their experience to those that report to them in order to impact employees personal growth which tend to create team harmony and organizational financial gains.
A sign that your company culture is failing is when the leadership aspect of managing starts fading away. It’s hard for managers to inspire people under them when there’s inherent discord, either in their methods or in their tone. That means there’s no unity in what employees and managers expect from the job. This can quickly lead to lowered productivity, tension among co-workers and management and lack of care and engagement, which can lead to a high turnover rate.
“You can build a much more wonderful company on love than you can on fear.”– Kip Tindell
2- Employees are becoming short-tempered and impatient
Careful! Work takes a lot of patience. It doesn’t matter what kind of field or work you’re in, it’ll test your patience at some point. Boxers need to wait for the right time to strike, much like how businessmen must be patient at wait for their plans to come to fruition. Success doesn’t get achieved overnight.
When your culture doesn’t emphasize or doesn’t uphold the value of patience, it’ll show. People will start getting impatient. They’ll start making mistakes just to get things done, they sacrifice quality for speed, which in turn creates unsatisfied clients and request for re-work or loss of opportunities and relationships. If you’re lucky, you can rectify what comes of it. If you’re not, the company could crumple before you know it. When rough times come, your employees will either start taking bigger risks at the cost of the company or start looking for seemingly greener pastures. Either way the organization loses, they key is to emphasize that business pressure should never be equated with taking shortcuts to deliver substandard quality work.
3- Cliques are starting to form
A successful company is built on cooperative effort. When everyone’s working together, the company becomes more than the sum of its parts. This requires constant communication. When people know where the rest of the company is or how they’re doing, they can adjust their efforts accordingly. Resources can be reallocated, and the company runs more smoothly.
When you see cliques forming that prevent open communication, get involved. Change up the seating arrangement so they don’t form isolated islands. Please, be mindful of constructive gathering versus destructive cliques. They key is to always try to provide honest feedback to your employees to ensure that they all coalesce behind the same organizational vision and purpose. Acknowledge, thank, celebrate, and reward achievements constantly.
“When you lavish praise on people, they flourish. Criticize, and they shrivel up.” – Richard Branson
4- People are no longer engaged
Engaged employees are productive employees. Being engaged means they’re actively present at the office instead of phoning in. They’re eager, happy, and want to see the business succeed. They realize that they are not part of the business, but rather they are the business. They feel like they’re part of a great team, a great unit of production that matters and makes a difference in the planet. It’s not just a job to them – it’s something fulfilling and often one of the best parts of their week. Engaged employees are passionate employees that do not need to be micro-managed, they are proud of what they do and they strive to deliver excellence all the time.
However, things fall apart when your employees are not engaged. Often, this is due to management treating them like tools of production instead of responsible partners that enhance the quality of clients, stakeholder’s relationships and image of the organization. Employees should never feel like just rank-and-file soldiers, instead of the valuable contributors they are. Without them, the company literally cannot function, cannot grow or expand nor create revenue to sustain its business model. Keeping them engaged is a matter of treating them with the respect they deserve. Celebrate their victories. Eliminate obstacles, assist them with their needs. Make them love coming to work every day.
5- People no longer care about each other
Empathy has a place in the office. It’s not a measurable metric and it’s often not directly related to a company’s bottom line, but it’s important nevertheless. When employees work beside people they care about, they put a little more effort into their day to make sure everyone wins. The entire business wins.
When people stop caring, the company culture and the business itself starts failing. People are no longer interested in helping each other out. It becomes every man for himself. They stop working with their teammates. Productivity drops and the company gets worse.
“If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people do look forward to coming to work in the morning.”—John Mackey
Company cultures are an important part of success and cannot be ignored to keep a healthy environment where employees thrive, grow and promote the organization culture. A good organizational culture helps guide management decisions and makes sure everyone’s on the same page working to achieve the organization shared objectives. Any signs of cultures dysfunctions should be dealt with immediately, because it threatens the very existence of the organization as a whole. Recognize the issue, draft a plan of attack, get your employees consensus and get it resolved before it’s too late.
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