If you’ve ever discussed all the different elements of what makes a job enjoyable and fulfilling, chances are work culture—the attitudes and behaviors of an organization—is one of the first things to come up. And for good reason: work culture can make some organizations amazing places to work and others toxic dumpster fires.
How? A positive work culture not only motivates employees to do their best work, but also encourages them to contribute to a creative and productive work environment.
So let’s take a look at three steps to building a better work culture.
1. Create and align core values.
Core values reflect how your organization does business, how it serves its customers, and how employees interact with each other. Essentially, core values define your company’s identity, and your work culture should demonstrate those values authentically. If it doesn’t, it can be easy for employees to think those values are solely lip service and feel discouraged or even angry.
It’s important to have core values be clearly communicated and understood by everyone in your organization. For example, if a company’s value is being accountable, employees should be able to hold each other accountable for accomplishing their responsibilities and tasks. By identifying with the company’s core values, employees can feel connected to the overall direction of the organization and find purpose in their day-to-day work.
2. Prioritize healthy communication.
Communication is the fundamental component of keeping your employees engaged, included, and informed. Workplace communication covers everything from updating employees on process changes and when to enroll in benefits to facilitating feedback and outlining performance expectations. Outlining performance expectations is a particularly crucial part of communication: employees want their good work to be acknowledged and for their stellar performances to advance them within the company. That’s why communication can make or break your work culture, especially if your organization has a remote or hybrid work policy that can make it harder for employees to feel connected to each other.
One of the strongest benefits of healthy workplace communication is the trust that it can build among employees. When employees can not only trust that the workplace information being disseminated is honest and timely but also feel safe giving feedback, it builds a transparent work culture. All of this factors into making employees feel valued and fostering creativity throughout the organization.
3. Encourage autonomy.
Put simply, micromanagement creates a stressful and unproductive workplace. Yet, this management style of closely monitoring the work of employees still happens in countless organizations. It can look like fixating on the smallest of details or requiring everything to be done in a particular, unnecessary way. Tolerating micromanagement can lead to high turnover, decreased productivity, poor creativity, and worse.
In contrast, organizations that encourage autonomy can create more trust in leadership, inspire creativity, and build more morale. Autonomy in the workplace gives employees the freedom and trust to complete their work in a manner that works for them and at a pace that is right for them. By giving employees more autonomy, you can increase their job satisfaction.
Build a Better Work Culture with the PATH Assessment®
A crucial part of building a better work culture is ensuring you have a solid team with the specific traits and behaviors that not only work well for your organization but for the jobs that need to be done.
But how do you know which traits matter for your organization, or how to identify them?
Most personality assessments test for the wrong things or use questionable logic to analyze responses and draw conclusions. But the PATH Assessment organizes employee traits and behaviors into four modes: Purpose, Approach, Thinking, and Habits. Far from the average personality test, the PATH Assessment leverages data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to match candidates for the traits most advantageous to specific roles. The PATH Assessment will reveal who employees are in the workplace—what drives them, how they interact with coworkers, how they problem-solve, and how they take action.
Take the next step in building a positive work culture by learning about the PATH Assessment today. Let’s get started.