Franchise company culture plays a large role in a company’s success. A positive company culture will encourage employees to work harder and stay with your company longer. Employees will also look for ways to help the business become more efficient and more profitable. When your people are happy, they pass the savings onto you. Here are some tips on how to create a positive company culture.
Here’s How to Create a Positive Company Culture
1. Prioritize Health
The world has recently come out of a pandemic, and health is more important to employees than ever. If you want to create a positive company culture, you need to make employees feel safe and healthy. Do this by providing adequate health insurance for full-time employees. People should get their insurance within 3 to 6 months after their start date. You should also encourage employees to work from home when they aren’t feeling well. Finally, you should make sure employees have plenty of physical space between each other. You can also install hand sanitizer stations and reminders on how to stay healthy. Healthy employees show up to work more and work harder.
2. Use Standardized Metrics to Measure Performance
Employees need to feel that there are fair metrics in place to judge their progress at work. You can gauge things based on productivity, sales, or a number of other metrics. Make them clear to everyone. You should also make it clear how you calculate the metrics so that employees understand what they need to do to help you gather accurate data. This helps you learn what your employees are doing every day and how much they can accomplish. You can use the data to adjust the metrics as you see fit.
3. Get to Know Employees
You need to make a point to get to know your employees on a personal basis. You can do this with casual meetings in both a group and one-on-one setting. You can have other meetings to talk about performance. These meetings should involve learning what motivates your employees and their thoughts about working for you. If meetings aren’t your style, make an effort to get out into the workspace to answer questions and help when the real work is going on. You will be able to show your expertise while getting to watch your employees in action.
4. Request Feedback
Running a company can mean that you focus on the big-picture ideas as opposed to the day-to-day operations of your organization. You may not be able to properly see the things that could use improvement. Who better to suggest improvements than the people who work there every day? Provide an anonymous suggestion box or anonymous surveys to allow people to express their thoughts. You can also establish an open-door policy that gives people the chance to voice any concerns to you in person when a certain problem comes up.
5. Encourage Diversity
People have struggled and worked for years to become equal to other people simply due to their skin tone, country of origin, gender, sexuality, or age. As the leader of your organization, you need to go out of your way to create an environment of inclusion. Start by hiring a professional who can consult on ways to increase inclusion in your business. If you do notice any form of discrimination, it needs to be taken seriously. Investigate all complaints immediately. Establish clear consequences for anyone who hinders your efforts of diversity and harmony.
6. Recognize Hard Work
Many employees don’t feel adequately appreciated in their current position. When you see an employee doing a good job, you should make a point to celebrate their efforts. Acknowledge them in a public way. You can also give them some sort of monetary reward for going above and beyond. Hopefully, other employees will be encouraged to work hard, too.
7. Create Clear Core Values
When you clarify what your company stands for, these values can guide you in the right direction during your daily dilemmas. Make sure that all employees in your company know your core values, too. The idea is to get them to go through the workday with those same values instilled in them. Write your core values down, go over them during orientation, and reiterate them once or twice a year while also placing reminders around the workspace, whether it’s an office or a restaurant.
8. Promote From Within
Many employees don’t appreciate being at a job for years only to watch someone else come in at a higher position who doesn’t know the ins and outs of the company. You should only hire people that you can see promoting down the line at some point. Instead of hiring C-level employees, you can promote within and hire entry-level employees to train. Always keep your eyes open for who is truly making an effort at the company.
9. Set Standards
You want your employees to like you, but you also want your employees to behave in an appropriate manner. Establish standards and hold people to them. If you let employees get away with anything, they will do just about anything. Some common expectations include regular attendance, proper customer service, and appropriate behavior in the office. Establish consequences when an employee does not meet your expectations, and stick to them.
10. Have Fun
Just because you are at work does not mean you can’t have any fun. It’s okay to joke around with employees and let employees joke and laugh and have fun. Encourage social outings after work and allow people to be silly. For some workplace culture examples, you can even provide games in the break room or ice-cream socials once a month. These little extras can make an employee want to stay.
Hire Applicants Who Will Contribute to a Positive Environment
One of the best ways to create and maintain a positive company culture is to hire people who will help make it happen. Luckily, Sprockets empowers you to do precisely that. Our sophisticated solution to hiring combines natural language with artificial intelligence and over 80 years of psychological research to predict which applicants will succeed at your company and mesh well with your team. It’s not magic — it’s logic.