Company culture is an integral part of a business’s success. Building a positive company culture and reinforcing it on your teams develops a work environment of satisfaction and growth. It’s up to the organization and its managers to create a culture and strategy that will fit the values, goals, and rules they want to set. However, improving culture and making the change isn’t always easy if you have employees who have been with you for a long time. To truly embed corporate culture within your team, you need to be a true leader. Keep in mind that changes are stressful to a lot of employees, so follow these steps on how to incorporate them with your teams.
1. Explain the meaning of a culture
Culture change and reinforcement can be great stress sources in the workplace. The main source of that hardship lies in the fear of the unknown and stepping out of their comfort zones. Therefore, if you want to embed organizational culture within your team, you need to explain its meaning of it to your employees. So, what exactly is corporate culture?
Simply put, corporate culture is a strategy or a tactic that contains the values you pursue as a firm. It shapes how people within that organization behave, which attitudes they take and how they communicate. Culture can be a distinctive trait of an organization that tells its members what is accepted, praised, rejected, or punished.
2. Display culture’s importance
Once your teams understand the true meaning of culture, if you want them to embrace it you need to display its importance. As corporate culture shapes the individual who works in it, it’s only natural to think it’s important to the organization. But to embed it within the teams, you need to display and highlight the importance to the leaders and managers so they can spread it further. How is that done?
Corporate culture brings numerous benefits to the organization and therefore its management. It increases employee productivity, which leads you to results. On top of that, it minimizes turnover rates. Due to that, you won’t have to break the budget to hire new individuals. Lastly, it keeps everyone more engaged, which positively affects customers and entire teams.
3. Motivate the change
Change in the company culture can be frightening to employees. Stepping out of the comfort zone and reinforcing something unfamiliar can backfire. In cases like these, additional information can motivate employees to accept the culture change and truly embrace it. How can you motivate your employees?
Create a corporate culture that will align with your employees’ values. Nurture a culture of recognition and acceptance, which will boost their morale and strengthen the culture within a team. The such environment provides everyone with numerous benefits and builds a better workplace for all.
4. Highlight the benefits
We can already agree that solid corporate culture is great for the organization, but what do employees have from that? What kind of benefits does corporate culture provide them with? If you want your employees to accept and act according to the culture you set, you need to motivate them by highlighting the benefits it has on their work.
Corporate culture creates employee unity. Since everyone acts under the same values and goals, it minimizes conflicts and promotes better collaboration. It creates a stronger bond within a team and with management. On top of that, company culture promotes a better decision-making process. A lot of employees struggle to make decisions on their own. Therefore, values and company goals can help them aim their decisions in the right direction.
5. Lead by example
When it comes to company culture and how to incorporate it into your team, you need to lead by example. From a young age, we learn a lot of things through modeling. Scientists have proven that employees do the same! So, be a positive example they need to accept the culture of your company and abide by its rules.
If managers follow corporate culture first, employees are much more likely to respect it and follow it themselves! However, in cases team leaders and managers break the rules and don’t respect the values, it will cause a riot among the employees, which will extremely negatively affect your company.
6. Set rules and expectations
To ensure your employees know how to follow the corporate culture, you need to set a range of rules and clearly state your expectations from them. You can create the perfect corporate culture and a strategy on how to implement it, but if you don’t set some rules and boundaries, you can’t expect your employees to follow them or know how to act!
For instance, communication can be a vital part of your company culture, if you expect your employees to be formal at all times, state it loud and clear! Dress codes, behavior, work hours, and type of environment can all be sorted under company culture. So, ensure your employees know the rules and expectations you have from them.
7. Utilize digital tools
Creating a corporate culture is one thing, but reinforcing it in the teams is a challenge of its own. To ensure your employees follow it and abide by its rules, you can get a hand from technology. Since we live in the digital era, implementing such tools will bring your company and its culture to another level. So, what kind of tools do you need to help you embed the culture within your team?
Employee apps and engagement tools are perfect for businesses that want to strengthen or change their corporate culture. They increase engagement and convey the wanted message to the employees. Consider competitors of Staffbase for your business. Tools like these provide you with multiple features that strengthen culture and create stronger bonds within your teams.
8. Use opportunities to share values
To ensure your company culture sticks with your employees, you should use every opportunity you get to share values and remind employees of their importance. Whether you operate remotely or from the office, employee apps are ideal channels to inform your employees, send them messages and promote your company culture. How else can you boost and emphasize corporate culture?
By organizing different types of events, you’re sharing the values. For instance, if hanging out with colleagues and open communication are parts of your culture, create various opportunities where people can utilize that. Facilitate interactions within your team and help them be a part of the bigger picture of the company!
9. Encourage relationship building
Building relationships with colleagues is a fantastic way of adopting the culture of the company. This is especially useful for newcomers and can be a valuable part of the onboarding process! So, how can employees build relationships to embed culture within their teams?
You have a wide variety of options at your disposal. For instance, the buddy system can enhance the importance of community and transfer values from one colleague to another. Similarly, mentorship helps new employees learn about the company’s mission and vision through informal conversation and friendship. In addition to that, you mustn’t forget to organize frequent team buildings and team bonding activities that bring the team together and remind the members of the principles that are valued.
Final thoughts
Enforcing a culture within a team is a challenge that is necessary for the success of every company. With these steps, you’ll easily create an atmosphere where employees are valued while being productive and contributing to the company. So, highlight the importance of values, and benefits of the culture and discover simple ways and techniques that will help your team adopt them!
