What is Workplace Culture and Why is it Important?

Workplace culture makes up the character and personality of your company. This is what helps set your business apart from others and it includes the values, traditions, beliefs, interactions and attitudes that are the lifeblood of your company. They say that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, but why is that? 

Today, let’s explore why workplace culture is so important for not only defining an organization’s values but also how it ultimately affects your day-to-day operations and your bottom line. 

What is workplace culture?

Workplace culture is what makes up the behavior that results when a group of individuals come together and arrive at an unspoken and unwritten set of rules for working together. It is also made up of the life experience that each employee brings to the organization. 

A positive work culture helps your company attract talent, drive engagement, impacts employee happiness and satisfaction and can affect performance. This “personality” of your business is influenced by practically everything including leadership, management, workplace practices and policies, people within your organization and more. 

One of the biggest mistakes that organizations can make is letting their workplace culture form without defining what they would like it to be. 

In a report published by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, it was discovered that over 90% of executives thought culture was important at their firms, and 78% stated that culture was among the top five factors that made their company valuable. Meanwhile, only 15% said that their own corporate culture was where it needed to be, and 92% believe that improving their firm’s corporate culture would help improve the value and success of the company. 

The Importance of Workplace Culture

Workplace culture is important because it can either work for or against your company’s objectives. Company culture is linked to things like employee engagement, happiness, satisfaction, retention rate, productivity, onboarding and more. 

Factors That Impact Workplace Culture

If you’re wondering what impacts culture in the workplace, the answer is pretty much everything. There are many factors that play a role in forming your workplace culture. These include:

Leadership and Management

The way your leaders interact and communicate with employees, what they communicate and how they empathize, what their vision for the future is, what they celebrate and recognize, or what they expect. How your organization is managed, for example what its systems, procedures, hierarchy and goals are. The degree to which managers empower their teams to make decisions, support them and how consistent they act. The leadership team should aim to create a positive and strong workplace culture.

Workplace Practices, Policies and Philosophies

Company practices related to recruitment, onboarding processes, compensation and benefits, rewards and recognition, employee training, advancement and promotion, performance management, and other workplace traditions.

Employment policies that include attendance, dress code, scheduling and more. Plus, organizational philosophies like hiring, compensation, pay for performance and promotions.

Employees

Individuals that you hire and their personalities, beliefs, skills, experiences and behaviors. This also includes the type of interactions that occur between them that are collaborative, confrontational, supportive or not, social or task-oriented, etc. 

Mission, Vision and Values

Having clear mission, vision and values and whether they reflect the beliefs and philosophies of your organization, how inspiring they are, and the extent to which they are communicated and emphasized. 

Work Environment

The objects and other physical signs in your workplace, which include what employees place on their desks, what is hanging on the walls, how the space is allocated, what the offices look like (paint color, furniture, etc.) and how the common areas are used. 

Communications

The way in which communication occurs in your workplace, and the degree, type and frequency of interaction and communication between leaders and employees, including the extent of transparency in sharing information and decision-making.

How to Define Your Workplace Culture

Many companies make the mistake of allowing the workplace culture to form naturally without defining what they want it to be, which is a big mistake. For example, hiring people who don’t fit, not creating clear and inspiring mission statements or having lackluster work environments. 

This is why it’s so important for you to take a step back, evaluate and define your workplace culture. Take stock of what it is now and where you want it to be in the future, and how these factors will contribute or take away from your desired outcome. 

Plus, observing how things take place such as workplace behavior, meetings, discussions and interviews can help you understand your workplace environment. It’s important to just start small and open a dialogue with your team about it. It’s important that your team members feel a cultural fit at your workplace.

Understand that workplace culture is always a work in progress, and it can and will change as time goes on. But, strive to make culture as important as your business strategy. Shaping it is too important to ignore and is one of your most important responsibilities as a leader. 

Company Culture with 1Huddle

1Huddle can help you reimagine your company culture by changing the way you handle employee training and onboarding. We offer cloud-based employee gamification software that can easily adapt to any employee training or gamification strategy you want to implement at your workplace. 

You can customize your content for a seamless experience and all of your employees will be able to access their training anywhere, anytime and at the push of a button. You can use our game platform to measure their performance and make key decisions on where you should take your gamification strategy next. 

Do you want to learn more about how 1Huddle can help you level up your own workforce? Talk to us today.