The Secret Sauce to a Great Company Culture : What Are the Essentials?
Current research featured in LinkedIn Learning shines a light on "How to build a killer company culture. The science of happiness". And if you really boil it all down that is the real measure. After all, we all want to be happy in our work environment, don't we? It sounds too simplistic but research has shown that happiness is the metric that really matters. Create a culture where your employees are happy and they will never want to leave.
So how do we do that? When you think about it there isn't a lot of difference between building and developing a great family culture and building a great company culture. While you want to give your family all the material comforts that you can, the essential ingredient to raising a family is to instil a set of values, ethics and beliefs into your family culture that you all live by. Be generous with your time and respect everyone's point of view but ensure their are behavioural boundaries that are recognised and upheld. Always be there when problems arise but celebrate and acknowledge the hard work and achievements. Of course families have a bond of love that also binds them but companies can also engender a sense of real loyalty and trust which is akin to the love in a family situation.
So, in a company, while it's nice to have beautiful offices, and the added perks of office catering or regular massages, that isn't what keeps employees happy. Engagement in their work, alignment with a set of core values that ensures employees feel that their work has meaning, positivity in their outlook and work contribution that is recognised and acknowledged and opportunity to grow and progress are all key to building an awesome culture that will ensure employee happiness. It's the deeper aspects of 'human' interaction and ethics that need to be developed and championed, not the surface 'fluff and tokenism' that some may initially find attractive and compelling in a company culture. Without the deeper, more meaningful cultural code and ethics, the 'perks' soon lose their shine. Nothing erodes happiness more than a sense of disenchantment and broken trust.
I have experienced work environments where there has been an awesome company culture with strong staff engagement and others where the culture was, on the surface a fun and happy environment with a lot of trendy perks but when you scratched the surface there was a lot of discontent within the employee ranks and needless to say a lot of unhappy people.
The company culture can make or break an organisation. Happy employees equals engagement, meaningful contribution, recognition and success for the employee and employer.
What's your company culture like?
Ros O'Connor
Thinking DNA www.thinkingdna.com.au
human capital and innovation are the source of all long term economic success





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