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Want Your Team to Achieve More? Focus On Your Company Culture
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Company culture is an essential aspect of how your organization functions. Think of it as the underlying operating system that governs how work gets done. If the operating system is dysfunctional, then even your best talent will struggle to make a meaningful difference. Because of this, culture is both intrinsically and inextricably connected to your team’s success or failure.
And yet, so many leaders ignore it.
You can’t see, touch, or directly measure company culture. It feels abstract, so it doesn’t seem immediately important. It’s easier to worry about meeting your sales quota, which has clear metrics and an obvious dollar impact.
“Culture is both intrinsically and inextricably connected to your team’s success or failure.”
But here’s the thing: your company culture affects your sales.
It affects your customer service.
It affects your employees’ ability to put their best effort forth.
It affects everything your company does.
Company Culture, Employee Satisfaction, and Performance
Company culture is not an extra perk. It’s not a nice-to-have, like an in-office pool table or gourmet cafeteria.
Company culture affects your team’s performance, no matter what they do.
That’s not just our theory, by the way. There’s a lot of research backing up the importance of company culture.
For instance, in an Eagle Hill survey of 1,016 U.S. workers, 77% said a strong organizational culture enabled them to do their best work. 76% also said their company culture had a strong impact on their productivity and efficiency, and 74% said it affected their ability to serve customers well.
Company culture also affects your company’s ability to attract good job candidates. According to Glassdoor’s Mission & Culture Survey 2019, 77% of adults consider a company’s culture before applying to work there. More than half of employees and job seekers say company culture is more important than salary.
If you have an unhealthy company culture, you’re probably missing out on some great candidates. And you’re definitely missing out on your employees’ best work.
A strong organizational culture leads to easier recruiting, better employee satisfaction, and more engagement. If you have a good culture, your team will reward you with high productivity.
The Elements of a Healthy Company Culture
Purpose
Purpose is one of the most important aspects of your company culture.
People are far more motivated when they have a clear objective, a purpose they care about. They’re more engaged with their tasks and with each other.
For most businesses, an obvious purpose is to make money. We all need to make a living. However, this purpose alone isn’t always enough to keep your team motivated and doing their best work. The most successful organizations often have a larger mission or goal that fits alongside making money.
Think about your customers or clients. How does your organization make their lives better? Is your organization working toward a vision for the future, giving back to the community, or meeting an under-fulfilled need? These questions can help you identify a meaningful purpose.
Once your organization has a sense of purpose, you can rally your employees around that purpose. You can find ways to work their individual goals into the larger organization’s, too. When employees’ personal goals align with company goals, they are much happier and more productive.
If your company has a mission, or a goal beyond simply making money, that mission is your purpose. That sense of purpose will lead to higher employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity.
Relationships
Success is a journey that requires help. Relationships matter on your employees’ individual journeys to excellence, and they matter on your company’s journey too.
Relationships are an essential part of every business, even if you are a freelancer who mostly works alone. There is power in building connections, working together, and supporting each other. No matter how independent we like to pretend we are, the truth is that we can do more together.
Relationships are also important to employee satisfaction. Our relationships bring joy into our lives. When employees are given space to invest in relationships at work, they become happier, healthier, and more satisfied.
Your company culture can support compassion and healthy relationships between coworkers and clients. Or it can create a toxic environment where people are suspicious of each other.
A healthy company culture prioritizes relationships and trust, not just competition. It supports healthy collaboration. It recognizes that your organization will be more successful when employees have a good attitude toward working with each other, with other teams, with other departments, with customers.
Training
Education and training are important for employee satisfaction. Most employees hope to grow, move up to higher roles, or simply try new things occasionally on the job. Employees want to know that your company values them and their potential.
If your employees aren’t learning and growing, they will eventually stagnate. They will grow bored with their current roles. After a short time, they’ll either quiet quit or move on to a new company.
But if your company culture supports regular training, your employees will feel that they have room to grow. They’ll be excited to expand their skills and achieve. They’ll see opportunities to work toward their own career goals. They’ll feel that their company culture supports them.
There are many ways to create a company culture that values training. Some companies include paid tuition in their benefits program, which attracts and encourages employees who want to achieve. Others have regular paid training sessions to help employees maintain their skills, offer rewards for completing modules, or ask managers to provide informal on-the-job training. Some do a combination of all of the above.
You may already know what kind of training makes sense for your industry and employees. But whatever you do, training should be a part of your company culture.
These are just a few aspects of your company culture that relate to employee satisfaction. You can learn more about how to create a strong company culture through Life Engineering’s Achievement Academy.
How Leaders Can Cultivate a Strong Company Culture and Employee Satisfaction
After reading this, your first instinct might be to draw up a written document about your company culture. You may want to plan a meeting to discuss your company’s purpose, attitude toward fostering relationships, and training benefits.
That might be a great first step, but make no mistake:
Talking about your company culture is not enough to actually build that culture.
If you want to build a company culture that promotes employee satisfaction and achievement, you need to change your processes. You need to get every employee involved in the training and measuring progress.
At Life Engineering, we have a solution for you. Our personal development software helps organizations create a culture of achievement. With our membership program, you get short courses on the psychology of achievement, tools to improve motivation and track progress, and more resources for building a strong company culture.
We also offer a unique, proprietary tool that gives you more employee satisfaction insights than ever before: the Employee Sentiment Score (ESS). ESS goes beyond just tracking employee satisfaction. It gives you insights into employees’ emotional states, engagement levels, and impact on your company culture.
Our team of scientists has done all the research on how to improve employee satisfaction, achieve excellence, and cultivate the motivation to reach your most important goals. Sign up for Life Engineering today to get access to the training and tools for organizational success.
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