With the corporate landscape being indefinitely altered by the current COVID-19 pandemic, it can be easy to let other priorities fall by the wayside. Internal daily operations are already disrupted by COVID-19 restrictions and limited personnel, and personnel at all levels are already experiencing heightened levels of stress and disorder. It’s not difficult to understand how a corporation’s corporate culture could decline in these stressful times. However, improving corporate culture and improving it for your employees can have beneficial ripple effects that save you money and grief in the long run.
Corporate culture is a manifestation of how daily operations, corporate policy, enforcement of that policy, and interpersonal relationships between employees affect one another and the company’s mission. Decline in corporate culture can come in many forms, including but not limited to employee theft, sexual harassment claims, executive or white-collar misconduct, or chronic turnover in personnel. All symptoms of declining corporate culture can have disastrous long-term effects on a corporation’s daily operations, hurting productivity and the bottom line. That’s why there is a key list of important items to consider when making a plan to improve your corporate culture.
Clarify your mission statement
Improving corporation culture begins with having a clear mission statement. Corporations with a clear mission statement have an increased chance of success because all personnel are aware of the company’s goals and how they are going to achieve them. Not only is the mission statement clear to the employees, but its’ also clear to the public and shareholders in the interest of boosting faith in the mission and daily operations.
Good corporate culture keeps employees happy
Improving corporate culture is one of the best ways to retain employees and increase the longevity of a good team. Corporations with poor corporate culture experience high rates of turnover. That means increased disruptions to daily operations, high costs in screening prospective replacements for the position, and further disruptions to daily operations.
Decreasing employee apathy
Good corporate culture keeps employees employed while also mitigating the symptoms of employee apathy, which can cause further losses, both financially and in personnel. Employee apathy can look like many things, including poor hygiene, patterns of absence or tardiness, excessive breaks, and lack of accountability when they do not meet expectations. This employee apathy is not always an isolated incident, and can easily spread like a disease within the workforce. Improving corporate culture means creating an environment and a system that encourages transparency, trust, respect, and dignity for one’s employees, and can decrease or erase employee apathy.
Increase productivity
The cause and effect of improving corporate culture balances a corporation on many levels. As employee apathy goes down, employees not only become more focused, but engaged in the quality of their work in innumerable ways that benefit the company. Productivity will ultimately increase as a result, leaving leadership with more options to improve corporate culture. This cycle has the potential to repeat again and again.
Open your ears
When improving your corporate culture, it’s imperative to foster an environment of trust and open discussion when it comes to problems within the organization. Having an open and honest forum where employees feel comfortable discussing problems with proactive leadership means pervasive issues in an organization won’t be allowed to thrive and cause further ripple effects within your company. Always be open to suggestions and make employees feel like their voices are being heard.