Company Culture: Your Job Shouldn't Be a Necessary Evil
It may not come as a surprise that excellence is always fueled by enthusiasm and joy of work. Seeing your job as a dreaded duty where you have to unwillingly spend time in a cubicle, unable to express yourself is far from it.
The building base of a company is the mindset, the collection of values you have in common. Your attitude should be about people, excitement and motivation to fulfill your goals instead of aiming for profit and charts. To feel this mentality in the workplace, it's important to consider your employees' needs and conditions to make them function effectively.
1.Listen
Whatever your job position ever was, certainly you would agree the best ones were those where you could communicate with your superiors. Communication with employees doesn't have to revolve about reports, it can be filled with ideas and inspiration or potential improvements. It manifests an evironment of progress that has to be benefitial for everyone, from providing their prefered office supplies to new projects.
Home office and flexibility have become a frequent policy. The reason behind it? You don't want to give an impression of a dictator. Being considerate of multiple productive ways of working for different personalities means a modern outlook and the desire of being benefitial for one another. Work should be a place that doesn't eliminate personal lives and doesn't trigger hardcore stress and pressure. The burnout syndrome has been quite a trend, after all.
- What's actually meant to be a „friendly environment“?
To make it possible to be honest with eachother within the team, it has to be comfortable. Good, relationship based team is a favorite part of their job for a huge percentage of people, according to surveys. Which, obviously, can't be fully manufactured as we would like it to be in our imagination. However, we can help it strive by teambuilding activities. Those can be simple in-office games or entire trips. The key here is to provide a space for them to happen and create opportunities for the team to get to know one another far from their desks swamped with deadlines.
- Team meals- office breakfast, group baking, dessert sharing or pot lucks are all activities to relax, snack and contribute to a fun atmosphere
- Play- short games focused on getting to know your colleagues are simple and easy to join. 2 Lies, 1 Truth (you have to guess which of the 3 stories your teammate says is real), Who Am I? (a person is assigned a historic figure, movie character etc. and asks others yes/no questions to help them figure out who they are) or even a classic one such as Charades are teaching you about team work and the significant meaning of communication.
- Out of office activities – paintball, a hike or happy hours... it doesn't matter what outside-world activity you think of. You combine bonding and time off, which is a great mix.
- Figure out who you are
In your inside policies, office space and employee mindsets, there has to be an identity present. The one you put together, know and stand behind. It's represented by plans, inner relationships, visuals and colors. This is you and it's who you show to the world- and what you live. And it drives you. It's a factor that potential future employees consider, that fuels your development. Something so essential it extends money, profit and other superficial motivation. It's the passion that's bettering your firm and at the same time plants the seeds of joy, which brings you closer inside the firm and displays you to the outside.
What's triggering those feelings is up to you. You have to figure it out by brainstorming, having conversations and mutuall contributing to something greater. By asking questions about vision and goals for everyday you are building a strong base. What's associated with your name?
Pic source: Upwork