How to Improve Company Culture: 5 Easy Ways

Company culture can make or break any employer. And with just 31% of employees saying they’re engaged, enthused, and energized by their work, even the best company cultures may still have room for improvement.

Building a stronger, more vibrant culture can have lots of benefits for your organization and employees, potentially boosting engagement, morale, and productivity. However, a poor workplace culture could have the opposite effect, leading to dissatisfied staff or even encouraging them to look for roles elsewhere.

In this guide, we’ll explore how to improve your company culture with just a few easy steps. Whether you want to take your culture from good to great or need to fix a broken environment, we’ll cover 5 ways to improve your company culture.

What is company culture?

You might say that company culture is the personality of an organization. Company culture is a shared set of:

• Workplace beliefs
• Values
• Attitudes
• Standards
• Purposes
• Behaviors

It reflects both the written and unwritten rules that people in an organization follow. Your organization’s culture is the sum of all that you and your colleagues think, say, and do as you work together. It doesn’t always come naturally, though. You may need to build and improve company culture over time.

Why is it important to improve company culture?

Company culture is the foundation of every business. When employees’ needs and goals align with their company culture, they’re more likely to enjoy their work. A strong culture indicates that the people are the priority in the company.

But the potential business benefits of a strong culture don’t end there. Thinking about ways to improve company culture could also lead to:

• Higher engagement and productivity. When employees are happy, they can become more engaged with their work, and higher engagement brings more productivity. Gallup analysis suggests a fully engaged workforce would add $9.6 trillion in productivity to the global economy.
• Greater creativity and innovation. Engaged and productive employees feel inspired to bring innovative ideas to the table. Companies centered on innovation and creativity can have a competitive advantage in their industry, with higher-quality services and products.
• Improved morale. Happy employees who are part of a strong company culture that supports and values them can feel more motivated to do their best work, even when they face challenges. So, it’s worth thinking about different ideas to improve company culture in this area.
• Greater ability to attract top talent. Company culture plays a large role in attracting top talent. As candidates conduct research into your organization, if they feel that your company has strong values and encourages growth, they may be excited to apply.
• Higher retention. When you show your employees that you care about them, they’ll feel more valued and committed to your organization. Your people will want to stick around for the long run. Highly engaged employees have a 22% higher participation and “citizenship” rate in their organization. This could also mean lower recruiting and training costs associated with turnover.
• Increase in revenue and profits. Engaged employees are often more invested in providing excellent customer service for clients, which can reel in higher returns. According to the same Gallup findings above, highly engaged employees can deliver 23% better profitability.

How do you improve company culture?

Working out how to improve company culture in the workplace needn’t be complicated. Finding the right people, getting regular feedback, and a willingness to change can all play their part.

Here are 5 ways to improve company culture:

1. Find the right people

According to SHRM, the average cost per hire is almost $4,700. Imagine spending all that time and money only to find that your new hire isn’t working out.

To help prevent this, hire people who not only have skills needed for the role but who also share your organization’s vision and values and will offer fresh perspectives. Highlight your company culture during the application process so your applicants have a better idea of whether they would be a good fit.

Avoid the common mistake of hiring people who all think in similar ways. This might seem like an easy way to improve company culture, but instead it limits the healthy differences in experience, background, and perspective that strengthen organizations.

2. Integrate your values into everyday activities

Ideally, your culture should be the place where your values come to life. But the values you aim for will mean nothing if you don’t intertwine them into your everyday work.

Ways to integrate your values can be found almost everywhere in your organization. For instance:

• Use your onboarding process to teach new hires your values
• Continue to highlight the importance of your values in company meetings and communications
• Make sure your marketing and social media reflects your values to keep your branding consistent
• Make values-based decisions when choosing company initiatives
• Use your values to guide performance management and help underperforming employees improve.

3. Encourage more feedback

Both your employees and the organization can benefit from a company culture that encourages more and better feedback. Here are two ideas to improve company culture with feedback.

First, to help staff members progress, many organizations still rely on annual performance reviews that aren’t very helpful. The right performance management software replaces this with a constant channel of communication that’s more meaningful and simpler to administer.

Second, many organizations simply don’t know what their employees really think of them. Surveys can reveal what employees like and don’t like, so you can shape your culture in ways that improve overall employee satisfaction and slow down turnover.

4. Keep up with changes

No organization is exempt from the effects of change. So, to keep up, your company culture must change and adapt as needed, too. The best way to prepare your culture for change is by basing it on timeless best principles, instead of locking it into rigid practices that often become obsolete.

5. Learn how to change a broken company culture

Despite best efforts, just about every organization will face times when something about their culture isn’t working. Don’t think of these issues as failures, but as opportunities to improve.

McKinsey has suggested four key building blocks that can help organizations as they transform their culture:

• Building understanding and conviction
• Using formal mechanisms to reinforce the changes
• Talent and skills development
• A focus on role-modeling.

What makes a good company culture?

As we’ve seen, taking steps to improve company culture could have long-term benefits for any business. So, what makes a good culture?

Depending on your preferred type of organizational culture, you might have different ideas, priorities and goals. For example, the things that work for a clan culture may not always be as appropriate for market-driven businesses.

However, here are some of the main indicators we’ve identified in our research:

• Employees are encouraged to understand the mission and values of the organization. Sometimes, we’re so ingrained in the day-to-day tasks that we fail to understand the bigger picture. This is where engagement and productivity can begin to decline. But when employees understand how their role matches the mission and values of the company, they’re more dedicated to accomplishing its goals.
• Trust between management and employees is prioritized. Great ideas and decisions can come from anyone. Key decisions shouldn’t simply come from the executive team—they should be opened to all levels of staff. Employees want to be heard and have a meaningful impact on their organization.
• Employees are motivated by a team-oriented structure. A company driven by self-interest goes nowhere. Working together as a team can lead to success and longevity. You could encourage collaboration and teamwork in your organization, so everyone is pulling together.
• Employers invest in staff for the long run. A low turnover rate is a strong indicator of a good culture. Not only are employees happy, but they feel valued and are invested, along with the organization, in long-term growth.

What does a bad company culture look like?

There are plenty of telltale signs that your organizational culture is poor or even toxic. Here are just a few warnings that suggest you might need to improve company culture:

• The values of the business are unclear or confusing
• Managers don’t follow the company’s values
• Problems with recruitment and staff retention
• High absence rates within the workforce
• Employees who feel they’re not appreciated

Have you identified your company culture?

Unless today is your first day in business, your company culture is already there. Every firm develops a culture, whether they realize it or not. Even if you do nothing, culture forms and evolves on its own.

But an unguided, unstructured culture may do more harm than good. For example, there might be a serious disconnect between your organization’s mission, values, and vision, and what its employees and leaders actually do.

Through surveys and research, try to identify your existing workplace culture. What kind of model is your business following, and how is it impacting staff morale and productivity?

It’s a useful starting point to build a more positive company culture that aligns your organization’s ideals and goals with everyone’s behaviors.