3 Tips for Building a Great Workplace Culture
Discovery & Learning
Create a productive and positive workplace culture with these three tips.
Building a great workplace culture requires commitment from the organization’s leadership and employees. At Ideas Collide, we focus on building fantastic teams, which in turn builds our amazing culture. Beginning with leadership that then extends to each team member ensures all maintain a great work environment.
One of the driving reasons behind the creation of Ideas Collide’s culture was the question: if you don’t love your work, how can you love your life? Work consumes so much of our day-to-day time, so it’s critical employees enjoy their time at work. Cultivating a great work environment becomes the key to retaining happy, engaged team members and reaching business goals.
Here are three tips on how you can foster a thriving work environment and build an amazing company culture:
Leadership Starts With You
It all starts with you. Committed leadership is a necessary component of any successful work environment; disengaged workers can equal lost revenue, upset clients, and a general feeling of tension across the workplace. In fact, Fast Company estimated that lost productivity costs U.S. companies over $350 billion annually.
Simple employee programs can help boost morale, increasing the energy of an organization and causing a big impact on the bottom line. At Ideas Collide, we offer employees the opportunity to grow through our mentor-mentee program, Leading Forward. Through Leading Forward, employees have the opportunity to learn new skills and grow not only in their careers but as leaders.
The bottom line? Start small with simple ideas. Arrange your department to model the behavior you want to see and advocate it to those who can influence others.
Give Back
Generously give back to your employees. This applies to teams, business units, or the company as a whole. As a leader, work on showing recognition and rewarding employees. You’ll be surprised at the impact something as small as a shout-out has.
At Ideas Collide, we end each week with a “brag session” where employees recognize each other for delivering top-notch work or pitching in to help finish a project. This helps boost pride in the work while driving a collaborative workplace.
Being generous also means going above and beyond, such as buying lunch for employees. If a team is stuck pulling late hours for multiple consecutive days, ease the stress and show appreciation with management by bringing lunch for the team into the office.
Not all acts of generosity have to be grand. Small gestures—such as a simple hand-written note or email calling out someone for their great work—create a difference in attitude as employees become determined to go the extra mile.
Create a Positive Environment
Make your work environment fun and authentic. Don’t schedule “fun time” on the calendar, forcing the goal of having fun onto your employees. Instead, find creative ways for team members to bring their personality to work. Lunch breaks here at Ideas Collide often involve board games, trivia questions, or watching the latest Saturday Night Live skit.
If Causal Friday or Hawaiian Shirt Day feels too forced, mix up your culture with a new approach. For instance, we have college football Fridays where employees are encouraged to wear their team’s jersey to work in an effort to show fan support. It’s a way to pause from never-ending deadlines as they discuss their teams, sharing football highlights and stories.
Other ways we’ve had fun as a firm include going out to breakfast, using lunch hour to go bowling, closing the agency early for Happy Hour or catching the latest summer blockbuster. While these options may not be applicable to your workplace, think creatively about what you can do to make work more enjoyable. Breaking away from the standard routine can be as simple as running a list of 21 questions about each team member learning about what makes them unique.
As you bring the fun in, make your team a part of the decision of activities to try, and watch as it changes the daily grind of the workday.
