Your company culture controls the atmosphere your employees enter when they come to work. It not only affects their professional life, but it also impacts their home life. It’s imperative you work to establish a supportive culture if you want to have motivated and engaged people.
The internet is filled with ideas on how to create a great company culture, but let’s take a look at how you could create a terrible culture.
See how many of these “suggestions” might apply to your company.
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Have few plans for the future. Don’t make any goals or strive for growing your company.
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Don’t bother to create a company mission statement or define the core values of your business.
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Keep your employees in the dark about their job, the direction of the company, and how you are faring in the marketplace.
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Let your employees rely on gossip for company news. Never tell them a thing.
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Never admit mistakes, ever.
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Remember the one mantra that can kill any attempts at self-initiative or employee engagement, “Management is always right.”
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Never recognize people for their contribution to your company.
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Make sure your managers walk around saying some old and stale motivational statements, like, “Eight hours pay for eight hours work.”
All of these are excellent ways to kill any vitality and initiative within your organization.
They are also an indication that little thought was put into how the company would operate on a daily basis, and how people would treat each other.
Company Culture Created The Easy Way
Here’s how to create the company culture you want. It would be best if you could do it before you open the doors of your business, but most people need to get their business up and running so they can make a living.
The easy way is to take the eight bullet points listed above and do the exact opposite. However, to create a culture that is clear and effective, you genuinely have to think of your company as a family, and you have to build it as you would like to see your family work and interact.
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Have a clear mission statement. Clarity is determined by its simplicity, and the ability of customers to understand it.
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Determine your core values and exemplify them. This begins with leadership accepting and modeling the core values at all times.
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Establish lines of clear communication that encourages openness. This means the lines of communication aren’t always directive, they are discussions.
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Recognize people for their work, and also recognize them for going beyond their normal work duties. People love appreciation, it’s critical to having engaged and self-motivated employees.
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Don’t expect to spend a lot of money. Remember what you are doing, you aren’t trying to buy people’s loyalty, you want to create the atmosphere they want work in.
Equal Parts Consulting helps many companies in the San Diego area with establishing cultures that reflect the best of the founders, executive staff, and employees. We focus on creating cultures that grow from the organic resources of a company. In other words, we use “cookie cutter” approaches to helping companies.
If you are looking to change the way your company does business, we encourage you to contact us and learn how we can help you.