Transform Your Workplace Culture: A Practical Guide to Change
31 October 2024
What is workplace culture, and why does it matter? Culture... this often-non-tangible concept is a hot topic when it comes to matters of employee experience, and for good reason. Your company culture can negatively or positively impact many areas of your business, including those that affect your bottom line. During this blog, we’ll explore why workplace culture matters and provide a practical guide to changing it for the better so you can reap the benefits that follow.
What is Workplace Culture?
Search ‘what is workplace culture’ on the internet, and you’ll see words like values, unwritten rules, behaviours, and principles appear in your results. Businesses produce guides defining governance, working practices, and policies, but behaviours are more challenging to embed.
Let’s take collaboration as an example.
A collaborative culture benefits employees and businesses, and you can set out your expectations, but it takes more than words on paper to create a truly collaborative culture.
For employees to embrace collaboration, there must be trust, psychological safety, and open and transparent lines of communication. Without these critical values and practices in place, you’re unlikely to experience a genuine culture of collaboration.
Workplace culture is like a puzzle. All these different pieces have a specific place, and once they’re all aligned, you have a finished result – your ideal workplace culture.
When the pieces are behaviours actioned by individuals, and one misplaced piece can put the whole puzzle out of alignment, it’s easy to see why getting your workplace culture right takes time, effort and buy-in from top to bottom.
Discover how to build trust in the workplace to boost solidarity.
Why Workplace Culture Matters
Why are we taking the time to explain what workplace culture is? Because it’s vital to your business and employees.
Your workplace culture can positively or negatively affect factors that impact your bottom line, including:
- Employee turnover.
- The recruitment process.
- Absenteeism.
- Employee engagement.
- Reduced productivity, and more.
A positive workplace culture tips the scales in favour of your business. A negative culture and employee experience will cost your business through high turnover, expensive, repeated recruitment costs, and reduced productivity, to name a few.
Should Your Company Culture Match Your Brand?
Absolutely! Your workplace culture is part of your identity, and your identity is your brand. If you’re a health food brand that doesn’t promote healthy eating to your employees, then you can never truly be authentic, and authenticity in brand identity is essential.
Employee perceptions matter here, too. When an employee applies for a role with your company, they’re not just reviewing the list of tasks, employee benefits and salaries; they’re ensuring your values align with theirs. At the early stages of recruitment, they’ll take the brand image you promote at face value. If they discover a disconnect between workplace culture, employer brand and their expectations, they’re unlikely to remain with your business.
Jamie MacKenzie discusses this topic in our podcast, Employee Engagement and the Power of Storytelling.
The same applies to potential partners and clients who do business with you because they buy into your brand ethos. They may reconsider their connection with your business if your workplace culture and employee experience aren’t as expected, or worse, on the negative side.
What is a Positive Workplace Culture?
We’ve discussed what workplace culture means, why it matters, and why it should be authentic, but what makes a positive workplace culture? A question that links closely to this is: how do you identify a positive workplace culture?
- Low employee turnover: If your employees stay with your business and your employee turnover rate is low, it’s a clear sign that you’re doing something right and offering an enjoyable and positive workplace culture.
- Low levels of absenteeism: Illness isn’t the only cause of absenteeism; stress and disengaged employees also contribute to it, which costs UK businesses billions. If your absenteeism levels are low, it’s a sign of low stress, high employee engagement and a positive workplace culture.
- High levels of employee engagement: You can measure your employee engagement levels through Pulse and Voice surveys to get a formal measurement. However, there are other telltale signs that you have a highly engaged workforce, including great attendance, motivated people and excellent productivity. Engagement and a positive workplace culture go hand-in-hand!
Trust, autonomy and psychological safety are also signs of a positive workplace culture, but how do you know when you’ve achieved all three?
In a high-trust organisation, employees aren’t afraid to take risks, think outside the box and fail. Fear of failure and what that means for their career can prevent employees from thinking creatively. Innovation and creation are essential for business growth.
Autonomy is also important and part of two-way trust between the business and the employee. Allowing employees autonomy over how they complete their work, gives them a sense of pride – they understand the value they bring. Autonomy also boosts creative and innovative thinking.
As for psychological safety, when an employee can bring their whole self to work, be authentic - confident - and feel a sense of belonging, they’ll return the favour by giving you their loyalty and best.
Recognising a Toxic Workplace Culture
Having established what a positive workplace culture looks like, we can easily claim that a toxic workplace culture is the polar opposite. A toxic workplace won’t operate on trust, autonomy and creativity are stifled, colleagues work in siloes, and workplace relationships will be poor.
Other signs of a toxic workplace culture include high employee turnover, low engagement and motivation. Toxicity is a productivity killer, impacting your bottom line and hurting your chances of attracting talent. Sites like Glassdoor and Indeed allow employers to rate a business as an employer, and top talent will walk away from an opportunity with a business with a poor rating, in the same way clients and consumers avoid businesses with poor customer reviews.
A Practical Guide to Change
If you feel your workplace culture needs improving, taking action is vital, but how can workplace culture be improved?
There is a significant list of factors that lead to a poor or toxic workplace culture, so the first step is to request anonymous employee feedback. Your employees are in the best position to advise on what needs improving. When it comes to the ‘product’ that is your workplace culture, they are your target market. Making surveys anonymous encourages honesty, and you need to know the whole truth for changes to be effective.
There are common causes of poor workplace cultures and low employee satisfaction. We’ll explore each to provide a practical guide to change.
- Leadership: Your leaders have massive influence over your culture. They must practise what they preach, be your values and behaviour champions, and lead by example.
- Flexibility: Flexible working is high on employees’ lists of demands. It’s no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have for employees seeking a work-life balance. Flexible working – when and when – helps employees manage their wellbeing and life, and by offering it, you show your employees that you trust them to meet their goals.
- Right to Disconnect: The right to switch off is now part of Employee Rights Bill 2024. This means that employees legally have the right not to be contacted outside their working hours. Before the topic of work-life balance came to the forefront, many employers encouraged and awarded employees who stay logged on after hours or reply to emails during their evening – a behaviour that put pressure on employees to always be available, which was detrimental to their health. Help employees set clear boundaries.
- Connection and Belonging: You want your employees to feel like they belong and envision a future with your business. Their loyalty does you credit and saves money in recruitment. Review your core values, ensure they’re up-to-date and evolve with business and employee expectations.
- Professional Development: When you invest in your employees’ life-long learning journey, you show them that you see a future with them and want them to grow with your business. Upskilling your employees gives them more opportunities to progress and keeps them engaged and motivated.
- Employee Benefits: Employee benefits are no longer a perk of the job; they can significantly improve employees’ financial, mental, and physical wellbeing. Our Employee Discounts Platform makes everyday living more affordable, with up to 20% savings on daily spending. Our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) offers in-the-moment advice and support. With a BACP-accredited counsellor available 24/7, 365, EAP delivers a return on investment. Discounted gym memberships help employees get fit, and Online GP, our digital healthcare platform, speeds up access to healthcare.
- Employee Wellbeing: If you’re aiming to improve your workplace culture, embed employee wellbeing into your core values. Most other areas – flexibility, boundaries, employee benefits – stem from this vital area. Working life has evolved to a place where employees expect their employer to prioritise their wellbeing.
- Reward and Recognition: Your reward and recognition strategy is essential to creating a positive workplace culture. As we explore in our blog - Affordable and inclusive ways to harness the power of employee appreciation – 66% of employees would resign if they felt unappreciated. From a thank you to an award, public recognition or private praise, recognising and rewarding employees for their actions and achievements creates a winning workplace culture.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but these are fundamental pillars of a positive workplace culture and areas you should explore. Ultimately, start with your people – they’re the ones who will be your source of information and your judge.
Transform Your Workplace Culture with Pluxee UK
Once you’ve created an employee-retaining workplace, you’ll want to keep it. The world is constantly evolving, and new generations will enter and leave the workplace, so ensure you regularly review your culture.
Get in touch with Pluxee UK to discover how our range of cost-effective employee benefits and inclusive rewards can help you transform your workplace.
