What’s your company’s culture like? Do you have a culture of kindness? Do your employees feel that the workplace you have created is accepting and inviting? Do your employees enjoy coming to work every day?
If your employees don’t enjoy coming to work every day and you haven’t built a culture of kindness in your workplace then there’s obviously room for improvement. It matters because employees simply won’t stay long at a place that doesn’t have a culture of kindness. Your turnover rate will be higher, and productivity will be lower. Simply put, your business won’t be as successful as it could be.
The good news is that there are some simple things you can do, starting today, to begin building the sort of culture in your workplace that will inspire your employees to new heights of productivity and make your office a fun, engaging place to work in. Here’s how:
Build Kindness Into Everyday Routines
This only takes a moment of extra time but can have tremendous ripple effects, both in and out of your company. Take the time to include a short handwritten note to important vendors and suppliers who have impressed you. Take a moment to thank customers for their business, either in person or via a short, handwritten note.
Those are tiny things, but they make a huge difference. Even better, they have ripple effects that begin transforming your office. As people see you doing these sorts of things, they’ll begin to follow your lead.
This, in turn, will naturally lead to employees using expressions of kindness when dealing with each other, which will just make your office a more pleasant place to work.
Encourage Your Employees To Use Their Power For Good
Every person, every employee has a voice and power. If you start choosing to use your voice and power for good in your company, if you lead by example in this manner, others will follow suit.
It’s easy to spot problems and focus on the negatives in a bid to improve things. It’s much more difficult to take a moment to recognize, acknowledge and appreciate the dozens, and perhaps hundreds of things your company and your people get right day in and day out.
Take the time to celebrate what you do well and what your employees get right. Acknowledge and reward that behavior and you’ll get more of it. It’s as simple as that.
See Your Employees As People, Not Just Sets of Skills You Need
Take the time to get to know your employees. Greet them by name when you see and interact with them. It’s easy to distill employees down to the skill sets they bring to the table. The modern resume and many hiring practices steer people in this direction, but of course, people are much more than just that.
Don’t simply treat your employees as ‘human resources.’ Treat them as gifts. As treasures. As the integral parts of the ultimate success of your business that they are. Do that and your business will reap rewards you can barely imagine.
There are a great many other things you can do, but if you simply start here, with these three items, you’ll find that your workplace culture begins to change in remarkable ways.
Culture though, is something that’s never ‘done.’ It’s fragile, and it requires constant care and attention to nurture it. The more time you spend doing that, the stronger it becomes, and the more your business will benefit.