3 Ways to Improve Company Culture in 2022

There’s a lot that goes into keeping employees motivated to work for your company. While compensation and benefits matter, having a nurturing company culture is crucial for employee engagement and retention. This is why more and more companies are investing their time and effort into improving their company culture. Your company’s mission, vision, and values should not be just some words published on your corporate website. It should be integrated seamlessly and consistently to create a company culture that’s worth joining and staying in.

You can improve your company culture in various ways, and it may be difficult to even know where to start. But here are three simple ways to get you started this year:

1. Attract and Cultivate the Right Talent

It’s important to start from your greatest assets: the employees. Having employees that share the same goals and values is the basic foundation to a strong company culture. Companies should stay focused on not just hiring the right people, but keeping them engaged and motivated.

Have a Recruitment Process That’s Aligned with Your Company Culture

Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill. Does this sound familiar? It’s a common principle used by a lot of HR professionals, more specifically recruitment leads. This doesn’t mean that you should throw someone’s exemplary resume out the window. It’s a simple reminder that skills can be learned or developed easier than changing someone’s character or attitude. Recruiters and hiring managers play key roles in finding talent whose values align with the company’s. This can be done by asking the right questions, doing offline or online interviews, and conducting character reference checks. Hiring a candidate that has great values and is dedicated to improvement makes it easier for them to buy into the company culture that you’re trying to build.

Invest in Employee Development

Even when you think that your workforce is already equipped to thrive in the now, it’s always important to find ways to help your employees improve. Whether it’s improving soft skills like management training for future leaders or technical skills that can help employees keep up with the world’s technological developments, investing in employees’ development benefits both the employee and the company. The employee gains skills that can help them improve their performance and even apply for internal career advancement opportunities. And employers won’t have to look too far to find someone who can step up when a leadership or management opportunity arises. Additionally, companies will benefit from higher-quality performance and increased productivity.

2. Improve Communications Whenever and Wherever Your Employees Work

A lot of companies are exploring flexible work arrangements. These include hybrid, fully-remote, and even part-time work setups. Working in a distributed workforce may be a challenge, but with today’s latest technologies, it can be manageable. Leaders in your company must ensure that while there may be physical changes in employees’ work locations, communication lines should remain open. It’s important to maximize both synchronous and asynchronous communication tools. Doing so respects each team member’s working hours while staying aligned and on track with projects. Putting in sincere efforts to maintain open communication lines shows that the company is dedicated to staying connected and in tune with the rest of the organization.

3. Enable and Encourage Collaboration Among Teams

Transparency and inclusivity are some of the important traits of a successful company and are key factors in building a nurturing company culture. Integrating these values should start from the top (i.e., the C-suite and top management). Being transparent with KPIs and business goals allows employees to know the criteria on which their performance assessment is based. There are many tools to help increase not only transparency but also visibility and ongoing collaboration among working teams. Productivity and collaboration apps can allow both managers and team members to stay aligned and aware of the different statuses of various projects.

Additionally, management should encourage collaboration among cross-functional teams. This allows for a valuable exchange of diverse ideas and meaningful steps towards stronger professional working relations. It’s essential to make a genuine effort to make sure that employees know that their ideas and skills are valued by the company. Doing so will encourage employees to become more inclusive and collaborative as well. It’s also an important reminder to every employee that the different teams, despite having different functions, perspectives, and skillsets, are all working towards a common goal. That unifying factor can make a world of a difference in improving collaboration and inclusivity.

Changes in the way we work (and where) can pose a challenge for companies. Adapting to these changes as well as the demands of the global market can make companies lose track of building and maintaining company culture. But if you have a strong and clear idea of what you stand for and your company values, it’s easier to make well-informed and company culture-aligned business strategies.