7 Non-Negotiable Traits of a Positive Company Culture

The modern workforce is undergoing a wide array of changes.

Positive company culture is being prioritized. Recent studies reveal how workplace culture plays a big role in driving outstanding financial performance.

 In other words: Investing in your company’s culture has tangible benefits! Gallup highlights how strong company cultures can lead to an 85 percent increase in net profits.

To add, powerful and positive company cultures can increase employee engagement up to 50 percent. Having said that, there are enough reasons why you should care for your workplace culture.

Given the latest paradigm shifts in the modern workforce, it’s time you reimagine and reinvent the culture of your company. While doing so, the focus has to be on the virtues that are essential for today’s workforce and the future to come.

In this blog, we analyze the various virtues of workplace cultures that are

essential for organizations to incorporate. With these inclusions in culture, organizations can build major competitive advantages and accomplish larger dimensions of growth.

Without further ado, let‘s discover what constitutes positive company cultures in today’s modern workforce!

7 cultural values modern workplaces should endorse

1. Employee Empowerment

Do you want your best talents to stay with you for the long haul?

Of course, you do! Business owners and managers alike would hate to lose their best workers that are vital to organizational growth. Which is why it’s important to make some brisk adjustments to your company’s culture.

Empower your employees by offering flexibility and autonomy to them. Show greater trust in them and let them bring out the best productivity in them by letting them choose how they want to go about their tasks.

In fact, this is the most imperative cultural value to have in today’s dynamic workforce. As organizations go remote and hybrid cultures boom, work dynamics are changing. Employees and prospective candidates now look for flexible works schedules, extended days of remote work, or even permanent remote work.

If you do not offer flexibility to your employees, it will be hard for you to retain them. They know that they can find many other organizations with remote working options.

Moving forward, you should know how much people prioritize remote work nowadays. A survey by EY. reveals how 40 percent of US workers may quit their jobs if their bosses do not offer flexible working options to them. What is also noteworthy is that around 50 percent of these people are millennials and Gen Z folks. 

This highlights how flexibility is the new normal in this digital age.

It is time you think on the lines of curating an efficient hybrid workplace culture. The future of work is remote or hybrid. You have to catch up with the changing paces before other companies attract your top talents!

Also, it is time you start giving more autonomy to your employees. They want you to trust them with their way of doing things. They feel they would do their tasks better when they have autonomy with respect to their work. Rather than micromanaging them, let them learn and develop through their empowerment.

2. Empathy and Compassion

This is a workplace value you can’t ignore in today’s modern-day workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic has made people realize the importance of empathy more than ever. Your employees have come a long way to support the company during a crisis. The least they expect from you is empathy.

Your employees want you to understand what they are going through. One way of doing so is by putting yourself in their shoes and hearing them out when emotions are high.

Employees today are much happier to work around compassionate leaders. When their emotions are respected, they commit with greater loyalty and diligence to you and the company. The workplace culture should encourage positive emotions among people. Right when your employees walk into the office, they should feel an aura of overwhelming optimism.

Moreover, empathy becomes even more important in a diverse workplace. When your employees have empathy for one another, they will collaborate better and leave behind their diverse differences. On similar lines, empathy is an essential virtue of remote working cultures.

According to a survey by FlexJobs, 48 percent of remote workers state that they feel a complete lack of emotional support in remote jobs. Hence, you need to know that telecommuting may be making your employees more emotionally vulnerable.  Making the need to support them more important than ever. 

To promote greater empathy among your team, you can conduct training on empathy and emotional intelligence. It will help them understand the effective ways to manage and control their emotions. Moreover, it will help them value each other’s sentiments and promote positive relationships. Needless to say, positive relationships are essential elements of positive workplace cultures.

3. Creative Liberty

As explained by the World Economic Forum, creativity is integral to nine of the ten most vital skills for future success.

Creativity is a charming skill that can unlock new doors for a business. But are you giving enough liberty to your employees to express their creativity and innovation?

In the modern-day workforce, creativity is among the most prominent soft skills. With creativity, employees can embark on the path of extraordinary innovation leading to greater business success. After all, creativity is the foundation of problem-solving abilities and competitive advantages.

A study conducted by IBM, reveals how CEOs believe that creativity is a highly valuable skill that shouldn’t be overlooked. But what if you don’t let your employees bring out their creative juices? 

In contemporary workplaces, creativity can be the greatest driving force to success. When a workforce is able to look outside the box and challenge the ordinary, the organization achieves new milestones. Having said that, it is vital that you back the creative potentials of your team.

Give your team members enough chances to express their creativity and ideas. Create a positive work environment that inspires the best creativity in your people. Look for their opinions, let them express their views, ask them how things can be done in a different way.

This is where your dynamic leadership will be put to test. If you can motivate your employees to think outside the box and bring creative solutions on the floor, you succeed as a leader. For that, it is imperative that you promote creative freedom in the workplace and bolster the strengths of your team. 

4. Rewards and Recognition

In any work culture, traditional or contemporary, recognition is among the largest driving forces behind employee morale.

If you want to create high employee engagement, employee recognition is a good place to start. The same is true for improving employee retention and promoting happiness among employees.

You feel great when someone praises your effort and hard work which motivates and inspires you to keep up the good work!

Your employees are no different. They too love it when their managers and leaders appreciate them. It makes a world of difference to their confidence when you pat their back and commend their effort.

With time, the relevance of rewards and recognition in the workplace will only increase. Gone are the days when employees would view wages as the sole determinant of satisfaction. Recognition is now an integral part of employees’ expectations from their jobs. Rewards and recognition are critical to the strategies for boosting employee morale.

As per Hubspot, 69 percent of workers want more appreciation to work harder. To add, a study by O.C Tanner concludes that 37 percent of employees feel that recognition is paramount to them. If they do not get enough recognition, it hampers their enthusiasm.

This can further lead to disengagement and even higher turnover. You do not want to bear all those exorbitant costs of high turnover!

Having said that, it’s critical that your company has a dynamic culture of competent rewards and recognition. To inspire the best in your team, you will have to be creative with your channels of recognition.

5. Mentorship

Positive and vibrant workplace culture should exhibit some degree of mentorship.

There’s no need to act like a boss and display authority over your employees. Sometimes you need to step into the shoes of a mentor. You should look to build a mentor-mentee relationship with employees. This little change of roles will foster positivity in the workplace.

Learning and development are paramount to all employees. They want their organization to facilitate their learning and development in a conducive environment rather than a grim one.

As per Lorman, 74 percent of employees believe that they are not being able to reach their true capabilities given the lack of development opportunities in their jobs. For them, a culture not supportive of their learning needs is negative.

The workplace culture should promote mentoring. Employees should feel that their superiors are happy to add value to their learning and support their growth. This will make employees feel valued and will promote a greater sense of belonging among them.

There needs to be a robust system of continuous feedback sharing along with meaningful mentorship. Everyone would love to be a part of such a culture and it will inspire top-notch performances among your employees. This is why people love to be a part of Google, Microsoft, or Deloitte. They have some of the best mentoring programs across all business organizations.

6. Employee Wellness

When employees look beyond the pandemic, they will evaluate company cultures based on employee wellness.

By default, cultures promoting employee wellness will be more lucrative for employees. Even if we take the pandemic out of the scene, employees are now prioritizing their mental health. If a workplace does not address their stress and burnout issues, they will disengage. This disengagement may soon translate into their resignations.

So, the need of the hour is to draw greater attention to employee wellness programs. Employee wellness should be a natural part of your company’s culture. You can introduce some effective wellness programs covering issues such as mental health and nutrition.

In fact, what you need to know is that a well-structured employee wellness program can lead to greater savings for your business. Wondering how?

A study conducted by NSBA concludes that investing in employee wellness programs can lead to a significant reduction in employee healthcare costs. Making it a win-win situation for all!

Also, a survey by Virgin HealthMiles Inc. reveals that 77 percent of employees rate employee wellness as a crucial component of positive workplace cultures.

In addition to health, financial wellness programs are in high demand as well. Other popular wellness programs include mental health counselling, smoking cessation, and weight management programs.

These programs give employees the confidence that the organization is committed to adding value to their personal lives. It sparks greater dedication in them to go the extra mile.

When the organization looks after their well-being, they will be happy to invest additional effort for the success of their organization.

Next step is to revamp your company’s culture with an increased focus on employee wellness! Employee wellness is the key to driving the best dedication in employees in contemporary times.

7. Positive Relationships

Workplace cultures are often evaluated in terms of relationships that co-workers share.

A work environment marked by respectful and heartfelt relationships are viewed as being positive. On the other hand, a workplace culture with conflicts, office politics, and strained relationships between colleagues is perceived as toxic.

Employee relationships determine the effectiveness of communication and collaboration between employees. Which is why it’s important to promote positive relationships in the workplace.

For that, you need to lead by example. You have to reinvent your relationships with your employees to model positive relationship building for others. After all, a positive work environment drives positive outcomes and superior productivity.

Having said that, you need to find ways to promote positive attitudes among your teams. This will become an even greater challenge in remote or hybrid workplace culture.

There is a great chance of emotional disconnect and fading employee relationships in remote setups. You have to overcome this challenge. That is what leaders do, they outshine others in times of crisis.

You need to find ways to cultivate positive relationships between your employees even when they are telecommuting. Great relationships will propel greater prospects of organizational success.

You also need to have effective strategies in place for conflict resolution and mitigating any form of office politics or discrimination. Remember, relationships hold the key to the outcomes of collective objectives for which employees collaborate.

Conclusion

To conclude, the points mentioned above will help you create a strong, coherent, and high-performing company culture.

It will prove to be the key to greater financial success and winning the active engagement of your employees. The sooner you revamp your organization’s culture and align it with the latest trends, the more beneficial it will be for your business.

Create an inspiring and vibrant culture everyone would love to be a part of. See how your teams respond then by unlocking new horizons on performance and productivity. Remember, all great things begin with great cultures!

Jessica Robinson creates content for The Speaking Polymath and her content reflects her highly intellectual vision. She is an educator herself but she loves to learn from everyone around her. She never limits herself to what she knows, she is always curious to grasp more. You can follow her on Linkedin or on her blog.