Culture is made up of all of the life experiences that each employee brings to the workplace. Culture is also influenced by the company’s founder, executives, and other managerial staff because of their role in decision making and strategic direction. In layman’s language work culture refers to the mentality of the employees which further decides the ambience of the organization. Work culture plays an important role in extracting the best out of employees and making them stick to the organization for a longer duration.
A good work culture creates a better workplace for employees and a better workplace means it appreciates and values employees and their contributions. They celebrate success often, and praise, recognize, and reward employees in a variety of formal and informal ways. They never miss an opportunity to say ‘thanks’ for employees’ hard work. It actually is a virtuous cycle.
A person who comes for an interview in your company, you may know his/her capabilities, performances, achievements very effortlessly but how would you know about his/her temperament or personality as a person. Sometimes a company fails to evaluate a person on the parameter of its work culture. That new person might be great on handling tasks but he/she might be disastrous in handling people. So, while appointing anyone, you must rate a person on your company’s work culture. A misfit person may risk your people and company.
We should welcome new employees with a plan that will help the new person learn their job and company culture simultaneously. Sharing the company’s mission, vision, guiding principles, and values and making sure the new employee meets with the company president and other key employees so that they can communicate the culture and expectations.
Transparency is essential at all levels for better relationships among employees and a healthy work culture. The company work culture should be very open so that anyone should be welcome in sharing ideas. The “Hitler approach” does not fit in the current scenario. Bosses should be more like mentors to the employees, assigning a well-informed, thoughtful mentor who can teach the new employee the company’s culture.
Each employee should be treated as one. Partiality leads to demotivated employees and eventually an unhealthy work culture. A healthy work culture leads to satisfied employees and an increased productivity. Someone rightly said that “you take care of your employees and employees will take care of you” and it can be followed by having a good work culture in the organization, where people are respected, nurtured and listened.