How to Create a Great Business Culture

Job turnover in an organisation with positive company culture is around 14%, compared to turnover in low company cultures at almost 50%

In last week’s blog I wrote about digging deep to find your true core values. Having defined them, it’s important to live them consistently, because from these behaviours will stem the culture of your business.

• whatever you show is important,
• whatever you measure,
• whatever you follow-up on

will be what your team focus on, will become the things that are important to them too, and ultimately will become the culture of your team.

So if you’re trying to improve your culture you might want to start with where you are now. ( Like if you were trying to lose weight you’d start by weighing or measuring yourself.) You probably have a gut feel for the atmosphere round the place but what can you really measure? Here’s a selection of

Culture indicators

• employee turnover
• net loss or gain of customers
• attendance
• productivity
• complaints/rework
• profit

Choose which are appropriate for your business, then look back over the past year and measure them. There are many signs of poor culture e.g cliques, clock watching, poor communication, stress or lethargy, sloppy work but ultimately the effects of these will manifest in the key indicators above. (If you graph each, every quarter you can use it to monitor progress, just as you do your Key Business Performance Indicators.)

Establishing a positive culture

So what can you do to change a poor culture if you have one, or to create a positive culture if you’re just starting to build your team?

Once you’ve established your starting point, as a manager or business owner, the first place you need to look is in the mirror. Look at the way you behave, what you follow up on, what you praise, how you communicate with individuals, what you show the team is important to you, every, single, day.

If you say that keeping commitments is important to you, do you always turn up to every meeting on time?

If you say you’re going to have a one to one with a team member, do you ever cancel it because you’re just too busy, or something more important has come up.

If you say that feedback is important for personal growth, do you listen to, and reflect on feedback from your team?