How to Build A Company Culture: 9 Tips & Tricks For Managers

Whether you’re a small business owner or the head of a large company, just hearing the words “company culture” has you stressing out. But, it shouldn’t!

First, what is company culture? In short, company culture is the heartbeat and personality of a company.

The Balance Careers goes on to say, “It [company culture] defines the environment in which employees work. Company culture includes a variety of elements, including work environment, company mission, value, ethics, expectations, and goals.”

And just why is company culture so important?

• it leads to higher productivity
• better morale
• greater employee engagement
• more sales and creativity
• lower turnover
• and so much more. 

On top of that, a Glassdoor study found that “56% of workers ranked a strong workplace culture as more important than salary, with more than three-in-four workers saying they’d consider a company’s culture before applying for a job there.”

Building company culture, a great culture, doesn’t require a massive budget, whatever your financial situation, company size, and industry, building a great company culture is completely within your means.

As long you invest genuine time and interest in the happiness and well-being of your employees then a positive company culture will grow. Use the tips below to build a great company culture at your workplace. 

Below we share nine ways you can build a company culture without breaking the bank!

If you don’t have healthy employees then you’ll struggle immensely to create a great company culture.

Your employees should be at their best – physically, mentally, and emotionally. Why? Because your employees are the core of your company, without them, success would just be a dream.

Therefore, as managers, you need to offer as many resources, tools, and on-site opportunities for your employees so that they can live their healthiest life – whether inside or outside the office. 

Always be on the lookout for new ways you can lower employee stress and avoid negativity so they can perform more productively.

No reality exists where building a great company culture means starting from ground zero. Instead, you need to enhance the current culture. Employees can’t be expected to make a complete 180!

Ask your employees what they like about the current company culture, what they don’t like, and what suggestions they have to help create and foster a great company culture that works for everyone. 

The people you hire directly impact your business and company culture so make sure you aren’t just hiring just based on skill or need, but also consider how an individual will fit into the overall picture. For example, if your company culture focuses on teamwork but your new hire hates working with others, they can seriously mess or even damage the flow you’ve established. 

Make sure your hiring process compliments your company culture:

• Candidates must appreciate your culture and values: It is much easier for your employees to work toward the same goal if everyone is aligned with the company culture and values. Ask the following behavioral questions to determine if a candidate will make a good fit.
• Optimize the interview process: Here’s the thing, you need to optimize your interview process because it doesn’t matter how good the interviewer is, getting the FULL picture isn’t possible in an hour. Therefore, have a team of interviewers to cover different areas – like skills, experience, cultural fit, and so on. When different interviewers ask questions and digest the answers, that leads to deeper and different conversations to best understand the candidate. Ask these questions to best gauge the candidate.
• Attitude comes before skills and experience: It is far too easy to hire someone who can do the job “right now” and needs little training. Usually, a new hire like this has an immediate impact but rarely do they grow with your company thus raising that turnover rate. You will have greater success if you hire someone who doesn’t have all the skills required but fits into the company culture and is genuinely excited to learn and grow. These hires stay longer at the company and can grow into different roles.
• Avoid “mini-me”s: Hiring someone to fit your company culture doesn’t mean that the individual should look like, think like or act like you and everyone on your team. Instead, you’re adding someone to enhance and diversify the culture. Create a balanced and diverse company culture!

Your hiring process needs to reflect your company culture in order to attract candidates who will make a great fit into the rest of the dynamic. Plus, you need to be able to easily gauge who is and isn’t the right “one”.

Given today’s technologically advanced world, employers find themselves turning to online solutions and mobile apps to reach their employees wherever they are. It’s just expected that the tools you use grow with modern times, and this isn’t a nice to have but a must.

Connecteam is a leading employee management app that provides organizations with a powerful and robust mobile-first communication and engagement platform.

Here’s how you can implement Connecteam to better build upon your current company culture:

• Employee Recognition & Acknowledgement: start a 1:1 chat for individual recogniation or a group chat for better peer engagement. Send a company-wide update to celebrate new hires, share milestones to boost engagement, create an employee spotlight, etc.
• Share Success Stories: connect employees with company achivements and personal achievements by sending real-time updates on business milestones (new deals closed, sales goals met, etc.) and celebrate success stories (include letters, pictures, videos, GIFs, a story, etc.)
• Put Employees Front & Center: make smarter decisions based on surveys, feedback shared in a suggestion box, start a live poll, and introduce an open-door policy.
• Wellness & Benefits: provide all key information in a single place so your team can access when needed, like the employee handbook, polices, procedures, etc.
• Register For Events: if you throw company events, make it easy for employees to register and learn more right from their phone.
• Fun Internal Communication: use fun GIFs and emojis, enable like and comment functions to include everyone in on the fun, and even start interactive polls like “which Grey’s Anatomy character are you?”, etc.
• A Personal Touch: share videos and messages from the CEO and higher-ups to your entire team so they are really a part of the bigger picture.
• A Digital Reward: Use the “employee tokens” feature on Connecteam to give employees’ gift cards for birthdays, achievements, or a work anniversary all within the app.

The time of just wanting to bag a paycheck is over. Employees want meaning and purpose in the work that they do, otherwise, they’re just not interested. And without meaning and purpose, job satisfaction drops majorly.

If your company culture has no meaning behind its work, you’re doomed to fail before you even begin.

Therefore, it’s crucial that you have a mission statement and core values that your employees are aware of – show them examples of how their role will make a positive impact on the company, the clients, and even the community.

Fostering a great company culture means building workplace relationships. If your employees don’t really know one another and interaction is limited, your culture can’t grow.

Create opportunities for social interactions in the workplace as part of your culture building – like team meals, company outings, happy hour, or even team building games. 

Building a great company culture requires positivity in the workplace. On a daily basis, you should express gratitude, offer recognition when due, smile often and be optimistic during times of crisis.

Even offering a casual dress code creates a fun and positive environment and atmosphere.

Employees will engage more when they are accompanied by positive behavior in the workplace. 

Using an employee app, like Connecteam, to send updates to all employees can work wonders. With the click of a button, everyone can read messages to celebrate the employee of the month, achievements like exceeding goals or KPIs, positive reviews from clients, and more.

By socially sending messages, you show employees their value and how much they matter, that social recognition can raise employee engagement in a heartbeat. 

An easy way to build a great company culture is to be a good listener.

CultureIQ reported that 86% of employees felt senior management listened to them in a strong culture environment, compared to 70% without a great company culture. Therefore, listen to your employees and ensure that their voices are heard. Ask for feedback at every possible turn, whether it’s about company goals or how to better customer service, what to paint the kitchen, and more, make sure you’re listening and acting on what your employees say.

Don’t just wait for an annual review! Instead, actively seek your employee’s feedback and suggestions. 

As mentioned, Connecteam’s employee app makes this easy to do. Instantly send surveys on any matter – create your own or choose from a template and watch the answers in real-time so you can start implementing action plans. You can also open the Suggestion Box so employees can send in their ideas, suggestions, and thoughts whenever the need arises. 

Programs and initiatives should be in place so that you are regularly reinforcing the core values that make up your company culture, that’s how you keep it thriving.

A way to do this is through “peer awards”. Have an annual and monthly award that is given to the employee who best exemplifies the core values – they best represent your company culture. The award doesn’t have to be something fancy either, it can be a stuffed animal or plastic flower. 

Sometimes, living these values can benefit your customers too, “Some of my favorites aren’t programs at all but are the small examples of going above and beyond: Sending customer flowers when we learned about their 30th wedding anniversary; ordering an Uber for one of our customer’ tenants who was in a bind; sending co-workers prepared meals when they and their families are going through a tough time. You won’t find any of these things in any company handbook or manual. These are just examples of our employees exemplifying what it means to be a Buildian. That’s a culture we’re proud of,” says Michael Monteiro, CEO of Buildium.

Top Examples of Organizations With Amazing Company Culture

While Google is synonymous with great company culture, Adobe is synonymous with creativity. As we said, they avoid micromanagement so employees can freely create. Additionally, they avoid ratings to create employee capabilities because they want their employees to naturally and productively create. Managers at Adobe are more like coaches and let their employees set goals and determine how they should be assessed. 

The Bottom Line On Building A Company Culture

Undoubtedly, the company culture in your organization is key to employees because your staff is much more likely to enjoy their job role and the company they work for when their needs and values match up with their employers.

When employees work at a place with strong company culture and are always building company culture, they develop better relationships, are more productive, and are dedicated to meeting the bottom line.