5 Surefire Ways To Boost Work Culture In 2021

Maybe you have an incredible product and provide marvelous services. But if your work culture is terrible, your business is going to hit more than a few rough bumps.

In Glassdoor's new workplace sentiment survey, over 58% of employees and job seekers say company culture is more important than salary when it comes to job satisfaction.

In this era of skill shortages, molding the perfect work culture is an unskippable step. Whether you are a startup or a giant corporation, your employees are getting choosier by the day.

Just providing a great salary is no longer going to cut it. And companies such as Google and Facebook understand that. That's why every top talent seeks to work at those companies.

But it's never too late to make some necessary changes. Here are 5 ways that can change your work culture for the better:

Five Essential Tips To Enhance Your Work Culture:

1. Promote Collaboration Among Team Members

Over the last decade, work culture has seen a tremendous shift. Earlier it used to be all about building a culture of individual high performers. Now, it has shifted towards fostering team collaboration.

McKinsey estimates that team collaboration can raise productivity by almost 25-35%. With the new advent of Gen Zers in the workforce, the gig economy is not the future. It's our present. Remote working will soon become the norm.

In 2020, organizations were less reliant on employees being present in the physical office space. Instead, team members are just as capable of working together from different places and times as long as they have the right collaborative tools.

And this trend of distributed teams is not going to die out soon.

Here's how you can foster team collaboration so that your business can keep up with the "future of work":

Collaboration Tools

The right collaboration tools will offer your teams a centralized solution where employees interact, share, update and execute the project they’re collectively working on.

Centralized Base

With a distributed team, the centralization of communication is necessary. It ensures easier collaboration for the team members.

Yearly Get-Together

It is essential for the company culture for even remote employees to interact with each other in a while. A yearly meet-up ensures that the team members come together for a few days of activities and bonding.

2. Reduce Professional Denial For Positive Work Culture

For a leader, it’s in your company’s best interest to address employees’ dissatisfactions.

A toxic environment is the biggest enemy of positive workplace culture. If continued, the toxicity is bound to hurt the company’s bottom line. Productivity will drop, and employee loyalty will be compromised.

Employees of today seek a work environment that is good for their mental health. Minimizing, covering up, or turning your head the other way, in effect, creates a toxic culture for all employees.

Eventually, your employees will start to jump boats to greener pastures. This diminishing employee retention will hurt your business strategy in the long run.

People work well with management styles that foster clarity and support. To create a positive company culture, start valuing employees' emotional safety as well.

An emotionally healthy work culture promotes active listening, transparency, and openness. Create a standard for yourself as well as your employees. Make counselors available, promote the importance of mental health and encourage positivity in the workplace.

3. Address The Need For Diverse Teams In The Long Term

A diverse team is not just a fad. It’s a business necessity.

The recent backlash of Pepsi, Google, and Snapchat shows how critical diversity has become. A diversity-focused culture is important and not only because it attracts and retains the best talents out there.

The University of Michigan revealed that diverse groups can solve problems better than a more homogenous team of greater ability.

A diverse team is smarter and brings more to the culture table than any other measure. Team members benefit from diversity by learning about different perspectives, ideas, and experiences.

With so many diverse minds coming together, multiple ideas will emerge. Every worker brings in their own way of thinking, operating and solving problems, and making decisions. Companies that promote workplace diversity and inclusion motivate their employees to perform better.

4. Employee Engagement (Recognize, Appreciate, Reward)

Disengaged employees are almost 17% less productive than those who feel valued and appreciated.

Scary, isn’t it?

The value of an engaged workforce for the work culture is immense.

Engaged employees are happier, productive, and deliver better performance. And happy employees happen to be the best company advocates. Not only will it create a positive work environment, but it also attracts and retains the best talents out there.

Nothing is more toxic to your company culture than disengaged employees. Recognizing employees on a regular basis has many benefits. You’ll see all-time high morale. When you actually reward good work, you denote that you care.

5. Create A Good Work-Life Balance

According to a new survey, a cross-generation of employees picked work-life balance as the leading example of a successful culture.

The firm's Future of Work report found that 62% of respondents thought the work-life balance was the most important part of workplace culture, followed by team-building activities.

The absence of such a balance creates stress in the life of workers. As a result, productivity suffers, and so do your business outcomes.

Employers can reduce burnout by offering flexible work options, using employee assistance programs (EAPs), and employee health initiatives. Additionally, benefits such as maternal leaves, sick leaves, and some informal days off ( such as birthdays) work wonders.

This article is written by Barasha Medhi who is a part of the marketing team at Vantage Circle. Barasha can be found either searching for interesting HR buzzwords to write about or looking at pictures of cozy Bel Air mansions. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com.