What is workplace culture, or, for that matter, what is good workplace culture? It almost seems like an impossible thing to identify. What’s not impossible to identify, however, is bad workplace culture. We’ve all worked for a company where things just feel a little “off.” That feeling can make it difficult for employees to really connect with their work, resulting in lowered productivity, decreased job satisfaction, and a decrease in employee retention. All of these things can significantly hamper a business, whether it be by not meeting certain quarterly deadlines or spending more time hiring employees than simply having them do the job.
At Payday HCM, we understand how creating a positive company culture can feel like a difficult task. We’ve had many clients approach us with questions on how to go about improving their company culture. At Payday, we’re inspired and driven by many things, but one thing that has allowed us to craft a positive company culture is the book “Remarkable! Maximizing Results through Value Creation” by Dr. Randy Ross and David Salyers. Inspired by their three dimensions of culture—values, beliefs, and behaviors—we want to share with you how you can approach bolstering your own company’s culture and how other companies are already doing it.
In this article, we’ll walk through three strategies that your business can use to improve your company culture. We’ll dive deep into each of these three strategies as they relate to a company’s values, beliefs, and behaviors while providing real-life examples of these strategies in action. By the end of this article, you’ll have all the tools you need to help your organization move toward a better future.
In this article, you will learn:
- Values: IKEA and Bolstering Workplace Culture Through Company Values
- Beliefs: Patagonia and Cultivating a Mission-Driven Workplace Culture
- Behaviors: HubSpot and Creating a Positive Workplace Culture through Transparency
Values: IKEA and Bolstering Workplace Culture Through Company Values
First up is values. While it’s likely your company already has values, the question is how those values actually resonate through your company and your employees. IKEA provides a good example of how having values differs from having your values dictate your day-to-day tasks.
Evaluating Your Company’s Values
“Company values” can feel like another one of those concepts that’s a little esoteric, much like “good company culture.” However, company values are very much real and have real-world effects: when laid out correctly, they can help to enhance the attitude and feeling around the office.
At their core, these statements need to go beyond just statements; they must be lived and breathed by everybody in the company. This not only requires substantial buy-in from your leadership team but also a thought-out process for actually coming up with them. Pick things that you indeed do value and believe in: if your employees can see how you embody these things, it’s likely they’ll embody them, too.
Example: The Eight IKEA Values
If you’re someone who’s ever bought furniture (which is a lot of us), you’ve probably heard of IKEA. While they may not set the standard for making easy-to-understand instructions, IKEA does serve as an excellent guidepost for companies looking to improve their company culture through meaningful company values.
IKEA’s eight values—togetherness, caring for people and planet, cost consciousness, simplicity, renew and improve, different with a meaning, give and take responsibility, and lead by example—are embodied through their work. It’s even easy to see how some of them, like simplicity, are embodied through these statements themselves.
If there’s a second thing IKEA is known for aside from near-unintelligible instruction manuals, it’s the uniqueness of their design and strategy around furniture. Phrases like “different with a meaning” and “lead by example” take on a new meaning when you can see the results so tangibly.
For your business, it can help your employees feel like your company’s values are equally tangible and real, giving them something to work toward that isn’t simply their job. Lived-in company values can provide vital meaning for employees even when their work isn’t the most exciting or riveting.
Beliefs: Patagonia and Cultivating a Mission-Driven Workplace Culture
While beliefs and values lie in close proximity to each other, they can have different effects. Having good core company beliefs can be the difference between good and lackluster company culture.
Company Beliefs You Can Believe In
Creating meaningful core company beliefs generally starts with one step: honesty. More specifically, honesty as it relates to your employees and their jobs. Let’s face it: as a business owner, you’d be kidding yourself to believe that every single one of your employees is just as passionate about their work as you are.
The second part of that honesty is accepting that that’s not a bad thing: someone can like a company’s values while harboring different beliefs about what matters to them. This is what makes good company beliefs so valuable: if you can provide your employees with meaning (that is to say, meaning beyond just their job), your company culture will see vast improvements.
Patagonia’s Belief in their Employee’s Beliefs
Patagonia is a great example of good company beliefs in action. Patagonia offers a number of employee benefits relating to the belief that they are nurturing people just as much as they are nurturing sales numbers and creating outdoor apparel.
What these benefits do is acknowledge the humanity of the people working for Patagonia. They say, “We know you have a life outside of your job, and we believe in ensuring you can live that life.” Things like 18 hours paid activism hours and their travel support program that helps parents cover travel expenses for work demonstrate their commitment to this belief.
When it comes to your own business, it’s important to believe in the people who work at your organization. You should want to see them succeed not only in their role but in what they do outside of work as well. Providing the space for your employees to find meaning in all aspects of their lives can help to improve your company culture.
Behaviors: HubSpot and Creating a Positive Workplace Culture through Transparency
Lastly, there’s behavior. What you do is arguably more important than what you say—it’s something that HubSpot understands, and their company culture is all the better for it.
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Yeah, you might say that you value your employees, but how are you actually showing it? Workplace culture is largely reliant on how happy your employees are, and a lot of that happiness stems from how valued they feel. As a business owner or manager, your actions have a large amount of influence on the culture of your company.
As such, it’s important to take stock of the things your company is doing to show your employees they matter. This can range from big things like generous PTO policies or employee assistance programs to smaller actions like keeping the vending machine stocked and taking a genuine interest in an employee’s personal life.
Demonstrating The Power of Behavior with HubSpot
How does a company like HubSpot eliminate the perceived barrier between a company’s words and its actions? Well, by using fewer words and taking more action. While we’ve spent a large part of this article discussing the importance of setting good values and beliefs, oftentimes, less can be more. HubSpot’s guiding principle on almost all things? Use good judgment.
This aligns with some of HubSpot’s core beliefs: transparency and trust. Trust is a big one, as trusting your employees helps to make everyone feel less like pawns in a larger corporate scheme and more like people who can make decisions.
For your business, showing you trust your employees and demonstrating your commitment to building their life outside of work can pay huge dividends for your workplace culture. Ultimately, you want your employees to feel like work is something they want to go to, not something they are dreading.
Creating Better Workplace Cultures, One Step at a Time
Creating a positive workplace culture is often easier said than done. Everybody wants to work somewhere with a good workplace culture, but how many can say that they actually do? As a business owner, you want to do everything you can to make your employees feel valued and ensure the environment they work in is one that fosters positivity as much as it does productivity. Balancing this can be tricky—luckily, with the tips provided here in this article (and as demonstrated by our real-world examples), you’ll have all the tools you need to push your workplace culture toward a brighter future.
As we touched on above, a good workplace culture largely depends on the happiness of those who work there. Oftentimes, this happiness can stem from the kinds of benefits offered. Learn more about the benefits that employees look for most in a potential workplace so you can stay competitive in the job market and retain the top talent already within your organization.
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