Learn 3 practices that will help you create a positive and healthy company culture and motivate your team to create great results.
What is the most common reason great talent leaves their company?
I believe that company culture is one of the biggest factors. Statistics back me up with this assumption. According to Fit Small Business, companies that focus on culture see a 72% improvement on employee retention. Not only that, but they perform better, with up to 29% higher profits.
When I interview new candidates, I routinely ask them why they’re leaving their current position. Overwhelmingly, the answer is in the company culture. Pay and position matter, but neither make up for a toxic work environment.
Where does a healthy company culture begin? With transformational leadership.
As a business leader, you set the tone for the company culture in your team. This is true whether you’re the founder of a small start-up or you’re the CEO of a massive, multinational organization.
Today, I want to talk about how to develop a healthy company culture that promotes teamwork, encourages growth, and leans into your core values as a company and a person.
I’m going to explain the three practices that work for our organization, and give you some information about how to develop core values that align with your company culture.
What Makes a Healthy Company Culture?
There are a few characteristics that are integral in a healthy company culture. When you ask someone to tell you what a good company culture is, they often don’t have an exact answer. They know what a bad one looks like. They can’t pinpoint how to create a great one.
I’m here to tell you there is a real roadmap to creating a solid company culture. In my years of experience, I’ve learned that it’s not guesswork. The first thing you need to consider is your own mission statement. What are your core values?
In a company with good morale and excellent culture, there is a shared belief system. The core mission, values, and standards by which your company operates ring true for each employee. There is a buy-in that every individual feels when they’re actively contributing to an organization they believe in. That is the gold standard.
Great organizations appreciate their team members and give them a lot of autonomy in order to facilitate creative contributions. Your team is actively involved in the growth of the company. They take pride and ownership in their contributions and the entire team flourishes.
There are set principals involved in putting together such an amazing team.
3 Practices to Promote a Healthy Company Culture
The three practices I’m going to outline have been an amazing morale booster for all of us here at the Brave Thinking Institute. We attribute a lot of our success to building a virtual team that’s engaged with each other and aligned in what we are all here to do. A lot of that stems from these integrating these three practices into every area of our work:
- Make Work Fun
- Increase the Amount of Celebration
- Develop Core Values
1 — Make Work Fun
The first practice is one of the most important on a day-to-day basis. Turn up the amount of fun that you’re having in your company!
In fact, we think this is so important that it’s one of our core values: “Bringing joy, laughter and fun to all aspects of our work.” This makes it a place people want to be. If they’re having fun, they’re more productive, more engaged, and more likely to love what they’re doing.
As companies have been moving to remote teams, it’s even more important to cultivate fun. You need to find ways to simulate the in-person work environment, even though you can’t be in the same location.
One of the ways that we did this was through a leadership retreat. Everyone couldn’t be in person, but we decided to get a little creative to make our campfire strategy planning memorable. We shipped every person a package with Graham crackers, chocolate, marshmallows, and a little candle.
When we had our virtual meeting, each of us cooked S’mores at our own desks. Not quite a roaring campfire, but it was still a lot of fun.
Think about ways that you can build some fun into your company events, and workdays, and you’ll see engagement, morale and results rise across the board!
2 — Increase the Amount of Celebration
While celebration is also an aspect of fun, it goes a little further. We want to celebrate our people when they do outstanding work.
You can develop ways to celebrate and honor your team for different benchmarks, such as hitting a target goal. Celebrate the team achievements and the individual milestones. What’s great is when you can see someone is really exceeding expectations or made some great progress and you can honor that achievement.
Everyone appreciates being valued for their contributions. It’s a great way to encourage your staff, give them reasons to cheer each other on, and a little incentive to strive for. When you know someone’s had an especially good day, or they’ve gone the extra mile, turn up the amount of celebration in your company.
Recently, we surprised someone by giving them an award they were not anticipating. We created a trophy and shipped it to them. Then we called them on video to congratulate them. That was our way of celebrating them. This type of celebration ties their work to the meaning of what we’re about as a company. It matters to the person because they feel seen and celebrated.
3 — Develop Core Values
The third way to promote a healthy company culture is by having defined core values that you practice as a group. Your core values should tie into your mission statement and the value you bring to your clients, as well as your team.
What are your core values? Make sure that everyone on your team knows them. At the Brave Thinking Institute, we memorize the core values and open every single meeting with them. This practice helps our team to live into the core values every day in all interactions.
While saying them at meetings isn’t mandatory for every company, I do recommend you find ways to make sure that your core values are followed in your company by every team member.
When everyone’s aligned on core values, and moving in the same direction, everything becomes easier.
How Your Core Values Influence Your Company Culture
At the Brave Thinking Institute, our values form our company culture. The mission for our company is to “empower people to create a life they love living.” We do that through our core values, which we call the Five Pillars.
These core values are the real backbone of our company culture. We make it a point to live into our core values. For us, they are integral. But they are an amazing practice for any company.
The five core values:
- We Believe In People – We know that each one of us is far more powerful and contains more potential than any circumstance, situation, or condition.
- We Believe In Love and Care – We bring sincere love and care to every interaction. We delight and surprise each other and our clients by anticipating wants and seeking to exceed expectations.
- We Believe In Integrity – We live what we teach. We deliver what we promise.
- We Believe In Fun – We create joy, laughter, and fun in all aspects of our work.
- We Believe In Growth – We grow by achieving our goals and exceeding our best.
For our company, these five core values clearly define who we are and how we show up in the world and for each other. They align with the services we deliver and our core beliefs. More than that, they give our team a concrete framework for how to work with clients and each other.
Are You Promoting a Healthy Company Culture for Your Team?
The three practices outlined above will help you create and maintain a wonderful company culture. Bringing fun into your work environment inspires creativity and makes the atmosphere joyful for your team, and your clients.
Increasing the celebration engages the entire team and shows appreciation for the commitment and excellence your members contribute to your organization.
Your core values become the framework for living into the mission of your company. If you do these three practices only, you’ll be well on your way to improving your company culture. But there is more that you can do.
I encourage you to look at your own mission and purpose. Make sure your company’s core values align with what you love. I also encourage you to continuously develop your leadership skills.
All company culture starts with leadership and the way that you encourage engagement throughout the organization.
Developing your leadership skills will make putting these processes into practice even easier. It all comes back to being the best transformational leader you can be! To help you with that, download my free eBook, 22 Great Qualities of a Transformational Leader where you’ll learn the most important qualities to help you inspire and motivate your team!
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