How to build and improve company culture

A positive company culture can support everything from retaining employees to boosting productivity, improving morale and encouraging innovation. Improving company culture typically requires an intentional, well-rounded approach that includes support from leadership and key decision-makers. According to ScienceDirect, 92% of executives believe that improving an organization’s culture can help maximize shareholder value—highlighting its potential impact and why efforts to strengthen culture matter.

Keep reading to learn more about how you can build and maintain a strong company culture that drives long-term success. 

What you’ll learn:

• Company culture shapes how your team works and interacts on a daily basis, and it is fostered by establishing shared norms, ideals and behaviors. 
• A strong company culture can encourage both employee and customer satisfaction, which in turn can impact the overall health of your business.
• Some ways to improve company culture include establishing common values and goals, ensuring you have a strong leadership team and finding ways to enhance the employee experience.

Company culture refers to the collective goals, values and behaviors an organization shares that shape interactions, decisions and day-to-day operations. Company culture isn’t a tangible element of your business, like inventory or equipment. Yet it plays a crucial role in defining the employee experience, which can lead to measurable business outcomes.

It’s important to strengthen your company’s culture because it can foster outside-the-box thinking, resilience and employee trust, which can lead to improved financial outcomes. Here’s more information about why you may want to make this a top business priority:

• Encourages innovation: Employees who feel supported in a positive working environment tend to feel more comfortable sharing and generating fresh ideas. These new ideas can help attract new customers by giving your business a competitive edge and creating market differentiation.
• Promotes adaptability: Embracing change helps build resilience—a necessary characteristic to have during times of transition or uncertainty. Having a culture that values trust and transparency can encourage your teams to weather challenges together, minimizing the impact of setbacks. 
• Boosts employee performance and morale: Prioritizing employee engagement can improve retention and encourage your staff to be present—both physically and mentally—which can help reduce the costs associated with frequent turnover. Employees who are engaged are typically more attached to their work and prioritize customer outcomes. These benefits can impact your bottom line, as engaged employees have been shown to increase profitability by up to 23%, according to Gallup.

To improve company culture within your organization, you can focus on strengthening your business’s values, enhancing the employee experience and developing your leadership team—while encouraging innovation. Here’s more information about the methods you can incorporate into your efforts:

Creating a set of core values to serve as a North Star for your organization can provide clarity and direction, guide decision-making and encourage alignment across teams. Ensuring your values connect to your company’s mission statement can promote consistency between your intentions and actions. When you lead with these values, you create a culture that’s built on trust, accountability and shared purpose.

Once you begin to understand how your company is perceived today, think about how you want it to look in the future. You can start by considering how your company’s purpose impacts all aspects of the organization. Then, think about how this purpose could evolve to support the business’s future needs.

Incorporate positive changes into your business strategy by developing a road map for success. By setting business goals and measurable objectives, you can better understand the extent to which you’re delivering on your goals. Start by testing this approach within a small department to refine your road map for the broader organization.

Having strong leaders at the helm of your company can inspire and motivate your teams, which can drive productivity organically. One of the best ways to lead a team is by embodying the culture you want to create. When leaders live out the values they promote, it sets the tone for the entire organization and encourages employees to follow suit.

When your staff feels unsupported and overloaded, they’re at risk of burnout. Not only does this affect the individual, but it can spread to other employees across the organization. You can prevent workplace fatigue by:

• Setting boundaries and clear expectations
• Offering ample recovery time 
• Supporting wellness through a holistic approach that prioritizes physical, mental and emotional health

Some level of conflict is to be expected in the workplace, but how it’s managed can be the difference between creating a positive or negative employee experience. By listening to all members of your team when conflict arises and helping them come to an agreed-upon solution, you can create a culture of respect and inclusion.

Consider using the 5 C’s of conflict resolution to help your employees work toward a mutually beneficial resolution:

• Communication: Start by listening to all involved employees and gathering as much insight and information as possible to understand the full situation. Consider meeting with employees individually before bringing everyone together for a group discussion.
• Collaboration: Work with your employees to encourage open dialogue and establish mutual understanding. You can facilitate collaborative conversations by helping your employees recognize that while there may be disagreements, they’re ultimately on the same team.
• Compromise: Some workplace conflicts have more absolute resolutions, but when there’s a gray area, finding ways to come to a mutually beneficial solution can require compromise. This is when you, a member of your leadership team or a staff member from the HR department may step in to provide mediation. Having a meeting with all team members and giving each employee an open floor to suggest potential solutions can help your staff feel valued and heard.
• Clarity: After you’ve come to a potential resolution, you can set clear expectations with all team members moving forward. You might consider putting the solution in writing so everyone stays on the same page.
• Consistency: Continue monitoring your team to better understand whether the solution is working or if there are any tweaks that need to be made.

Encouraging collaboration both at the department level and across the organization creates a culture rooted in teamwork and alignment. Not only does this help break down organizational silos, but it also offers learning opportunities that might otherwise be missed when your teams operate independently.

You might consider investing in collaboration tools to help your team communicate more effectively—even if they work remotely or across different locations. You could also offer different approaches to collaboration based on various working styles. For example, while some of your team might prefer structured in-person meetings to facilitate cross-functional work, others might like more open-ended brainstorming workshops.

How your employees engage with their day-to-day work influences overall productivity and retention. Ensuring your employees feel appreciated for their contributions can make an impact on how your staff shows up each day. Offering recognition programs at both the peer-to-peer and leadership levels can motivate employees and help them feel valued.

Innovation requires a culture that embraces diverse perspectives, welcomes creativity and encourages calculated risk-taking. When employees feel safe and supported, they may be more likely to share new ideas and make suggestions that could lead to new products and services or improved processes. You can foster innovation by making brainstorming and problem-solving a regular part of your team’s workflow and understanding that failure can be a valuable component of growth.

Regularly gathering feedback from key stakeholders can help you better understand how your company is perceived and identify opportunities for improvement. Start with the people who know it best: its employees and customers. 

When you make a sincere effort to engage them, they can help inform and shape your purpose and culture. Here are ways to get feedback internally and externally:

• Let your employees tell their stories. Listen to their experiences and see how they tie back to your company’s culture.
• Do your research, including reading customer reviews. Dig through online reviews—both positive and negative—to find common themes in your customers’ experiences and identify opportunities to improve customer satisfaction. Focus groups, one-on-one interviews and surveys can be effective, too.
• Commit to a continuous cycle of feedback. Continue to gather feedback through interviews, surveys, focus groups and more.

If you want to know more about company culture, here are some answers to frequently asked questions:

Think of your company’s culture as its personality guiding you and your employees in how you operate on a daily basis. Fostering a positive business culture can help create the energized workforce and customer base you need to position your organization for long-term success.

Another way to boost your company’s potential is by finding ways to manage cash flow more efficiently and determining how to best reinvest funds in growth opportunities. This is why you might consider using a business credit card from Capital One to move your organization forward. You can get pre-approved today—without impacting your credit scores.