How many times have you gone for a job and heard ‘they have a GREAT culture!’, and taken it with a grain of salt? You’d be forgiven for feeling like work culture has become a buzz word within the corporate world in the past few years, with little meaning associated with it. However, team culture within the workplace is one of the most vital pieces of the puzzle when it comes to productivity, positive mental health and job satisfaction.
So, when it comes to nurturing a fantastic team culture within the workplace, we often share our top tips with our Majer Recruitment clients, because creating a winning culture will not only attract candidates, but help you retain top talent and keep your business on the right trajectory.
DO
Understand your company values
Go back to basics. What does your company stand for? What do you want to be remembered by and how do you want others to see you? These will be the foundation on which you build your amazing company culture and ensure your team and leadership roles are working off a set standard.
Communicate openly and honestly
Arguably one of the most important parts of building a fantastic team culture is keeping communication open and transparent, particularly when disseminating information from leadership down. Information should never be used as a currency in a workplace, as it leads to secretive and toxic behaviour. Create a structured internal communications plan and follow it through.
Embrace diverse viewpoints
Consider and encourage different viewpoints in the workplace. Hearing different opinions has a multitude of benefits. It makes everyone feel heard and understood, and also helps broaden our thinking and problem solving.
Professionals at all levels can greatly benefit from creating a safe space for people to share their viewpoints, and your team will thank you for it.
Allow time for humour and personality
It’s a given that work can get stressful, and it’s integral that your team feel like they can keep their sense of humour throughout it all. In fact, being able to keep their sense of humour about them is an admirable and desirable trait in employees.
As Dale Carnegie, an American writer and lecturer, said, “people rarely succeed unless they are having fun in what they are doing”. Give your team the opportunity to have fun, show their personalities and look on the bright side. They’ll return the favour by working harder because they enjoy the work they’re doing.
Be flexible
This feels almost like it goes unsaid as we move towards a post-pandemic corporate era, however it’s too important to miss. Flexibility is a huge incentive for talent and candidates, with days working remotely now almost as commonplace as complimentary coffee and tea in the communal kitchen. Decide how you want it to look, and make it uniform across the organisation.
DON’T
Reschedule one-on-ones
Rescheduling one-on-ones (especially at the last minute) sends the impression to your team that you don’t respect their time, or tells them that they are not your priority. Sometimes there is no way around a scheduling problem due to sickness, emergencies or a changed deadline. However, whenever possible, stick to your set 1:1 time with your colleagues.
Limit learning opportunities to the job description
To keep great candidates and talent, you have to give them so much more than just a simple job to do. Provide learning opportunities that not only help them sharpen their pencil within their current skill set, but learn what other skills they want to learn from scratch – and encourage them to seek out appropriate opportunities that will nurture those aspirations.
Majer Recruitment
At Majer Recruitment, we foster a collaborative, transparent and flexible approach to our working which enables a positive culture. We strongly believe this generates passionate teams who can adapt to everyone’s benefit. We’re here to support your talent acquisition, recruitment and career development. Contact us – we’d love to invigorate your teams with our tools to ensure your work culture is as strong as possible.
