GUEST BLOG: How to develop a winning company culture

By Karen Lawlor, country manager for Ireland at Regus

There’s a lot more to running a successful business than just profit and expansion. If you want to keep employees engaged, motivated and productive, you need to nurture the kind of culture that they can all happily get behind.

It’s not just a case of pleasing the current team, either: it could also make you a more attractive destination for job seekers. According to a recent survey from Deloitte, six out of 10 millennials are looking for a company with ‘a sense of purpose’, and as a generation, they’re more likely to place a high priority on wellbeing, growth and development, rather than rewards, profit and financial goals.

So just how can you foster the kind of company culture that attracts, retains and motivates the brightest talent, without losing sight of your business’s targets?

According to a 2013 study from the University of Pennsylvania, there are two kinds of workplace culture: ‘cognitive’, involving teamwork and targets, and ‘emotional’, involving what they call ‘companionate love’ – caring for, listening to and taking a personal interest in your colleagues and employees.

In a study of more than 3,000 employees across seven different industries, the researchers found a positive correlation between a culture of companionate love and higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment to the company and accountability for performance.

According to Sigal Barsade, co-author of the study, the message for managers is clear: tenderness, compassion, affection and caring are important in the workplace.

“Management can do something about this,” she says. “They should be thinking about the emotional culture. It starts with how they are treating their own employees when they see them. Are they showing these kinds of emotions? This is something that can definitely be very purposeful – not just something that rises organically.”

Flexible working arrangements, promising career opportunities and a warm atmosphere are all attractive and meaningful selling points

FOCUS ON VALUES, NOT PERKS

Fully stocked fridges and ping pong tables make for great photos on your company’s website. But as drivers of engagement and wellbeing, they’re usually fairly superficial.

Instead, try to provide the things that your workers really want from an employer – the means to work remotely, or the professional learning and development that brings them closer to their career goals.

However, that doesn’t mean that your company values can’t become perks in their own right. Flexible working arrangements, promising career opportunities and a warm atmosphere are all attractive and meaningful selling points that can become a part of your business’s marketing and recruitment drives.

LISTEN MORE

Every business is well aware of the importance of listening to its customers – gaining valuable insight and feedback to better understand their relationship with consumers.

But not all businesses are applying the same logic to what’s going on internally. If you want to create a culture and atmosphere that your team can be proud to be a part of, you need to listen to what they want.

Luckily there are plenty of ways to do this: surveys, anonymous suggestion boxes, office whiteboards, or even just being a highly approachable and attentive listener. What’s important is that you really do listen, thank them for their input, and take action. It’s no good ignoring the things you don’t want to hear, or taking offence to genuine complaints or suggestions – when workers feel like their voices are really being heard, it breeds a level of trust and employee empowerment that encourages more voices, more communication, and more useful information for you to act on.

BE TRANSPARENT

If you want a workforce that plays an active role in the goals and progress of your company, you need to keep them in touch with what’s really going on. When workers have access to the kinds of data that let them see how their individual achievements are affecting the performance of the organisation, they can take greater ownership of their work: they become more accountable and more involved.

Perhaps more importantly, corporate transparency is a gesture of trust. It makes your team feel more valued, connected and loyal to a more personal organisation.

TAKE A STEP BACK

No one likes to be micro-managed. And while every new-starter needs some hand holding in the beginning, you’ll need to let them start to work their own way if they’re ever going to carve out their own personal place in your company.

Of course, you’ll still need to provide guidelines and goals if you want to get the most out of them. But by giving them the freedom to reach those goals in a way that suits them, you’re empowering your employees, rather than stifling them.