How to Change Culture at Work in a Subtle Way
If you’re seeing workers quit their jobs, a high turnover rate, difficulty to hold onto talent, or communication issues, you might have a company culture problem. The culture at work speaks a lot to your professional standards, and how employees and clients are treated. Is your culture up to par? If not, you need to find a way on how to change culture at work.
You can’t force company culture change. Changing culture at work requires subtle and strategic business implementation. If you want harassment to disappear, stop harassing. This is an extreme example, but you get it. It’s not enough to say, “We are going to be more accepting of others’ views.” You’ve got do it. Culture change is done in behaviour, not as a directive.
If you are tasked with overhauling the culture in your organization, here are ten methods on how to change culture at work:
1. Focus on your employees
The best way o how to change culture at work is to appeal to our human sensibilities. Company culture to a degree is about building reputation. Naturally, we might think a re-branding. In this case, you don’t want to do that.
Your employees and clients are your biggest advocates. If you want a culture change, focus on inspiring employees, engaging them, and impressing them.
2. Evaluate internal company inequality
There is no reason for a person in a workplace to be treated differently because of their race, ethnicity, gender, or beliefs. While focusing on your employees, consider any inequalities in pay scale or responsibilities. These factors need to be considered when you want to change culture at work.
Has anyone been accidentally or purposefully mistreated by your company’s infrastructure? If so, here’s your chance to make a fix. By being aware of your own actions, you’re sending a message from the top down of a safe, healthy, and equal company culture.
3. Identify work motivations
If you can find what motivates your employees to come to work and perform well, you can maximize the reward on those motivations and use it to change the culture at work.
There are likely internal and external motivators on performance, with some seeking leadership and further responsibilities while perhaps others are better motivated by a financial reward.
4. Identify how work is meaningful
The employees who love their jobs often do so because they feel they are contributing to meaningful work. Every person wants to have a purpose, value, and impact to the world. Employers don’t always make it clear how meaningful their work is or the value they bring.
If you aren’t certain yourself, think about what it is that makes your business meaningful, the value it contributes to others, and highlight that.
5. Facilitate connections between employees
As wonderful as rewards are, you don’t arrive at a healthy company culture strictly through promises of compensation for best performance. For some, the meaning and worth of working are in the connections with others in the office.
Facilitate those connections by offering opportunities to be social in group activities, delegating responsibilities to partnerships or teams, and a comfortable break room. Positive friendships are a great way to change culture at work.
6. Invest in personal and professional growth
Companies that get a lot of positive attention are those that invest in their employees. If it’s possible, consider offering compensation or support for education, training, personal growth, or career development. This shows you’re concerned about your employees’ well-being and has been shown to increase loyalty.
7. Acknowledgement at work
Make an effort to privately and publicly acknowledge employees who are performing adequately or outperforming. Acknowledgment of a ‘job well done’ feels good. It lets an employee know that you’re paying attention.
One of the most common supervisor and management mistakes is not communicating that to employees. If an employee feels like you don’t care about their performance, they’re not going to either.
8. Punish inappropriate behaviours
With acknowledgment and rewards for positive behaviour, there also needs to be some consequences for negative behaviour. We aren’t talking about cutting pay or punishing underperforming employees. These are consequences for inappropriate behaviours relating to harassment, bullying, or code of conduct violations.
Your employees must feel like they work somewhere that’s safe and which respects them. When you don’t punish what breaks the standards of professionalism and what’s appropriate in the workplace, you won’t ever be capable of achieving a fair, equitable workplace.
9. Communicate with employees regularly
Annual performance reviews aren’t enough to make your employees feel invested. Invite employees to meet with you regularly, even if it’s for an unimportant reason. Give them some time. Let them know your vision for their position and where you see them in a company’s vision.
This is another strategy to make them feel valued and heard. Through these meetings, you can also address communication errors and facilitate stronger bonds between company and employee.
10. Bonding opportunities
As a leader, you can’t rely on conveying culture to equate to that culture being the rule of law. Just like we said that you have to live it, your employees have to do the same. Employees who don’t understand one another, who don’t have anything in common, and who don’t have bonding opportunities aren’t going to work together like a team.
Consider having a company retreat or even a company dinner once every three months as a means of connecting employees. The best way to change culture at work is by fostering communication in a healthy, social environment.
