Company culture plays a huge role in the success of your organization and the development of your employees. In fact, many businesses that suffer from unengaged workers, unproductive environments, and high turnover rates often find that their culture slip-ups are to blame.

The truth is that culture and employee engagement go hand in hand. Businesses that do not understand this value and don’t make an effort to create a positive work environment typically find themselves unable to keep talented employees around. On the other hand, businesses with healthy cultures have no problem with this and are 20 percent more profitable.

How to Improve Company Culture

While it’s important to build a strong business environment right from the start, it is never too late to make positive changes that will help your business in the long run. Here are three critical steps that your business can take to improve company culture.

Keep Teams Organized and Connected with Agile

Disorganization is more than just an annoyance or inconvenience; it wastes company time and money by slowing processes down. Employees lose up to 9 hours a week due to disorganized work environments, making it a huge time-waster and productivity killer.

Teams that adopted an Agile strategy reported a 28 percent higher project success rate, due to this  strategy’s focus on clear communication and teamwork. Many businesses have benefitted from using project management software systems that offer virtual tools to keep everyone connected and organized.

Tools like Nutcache combine the Agile framework with online resources for easy, instant organization. The shared calendar helps teams stay structured and connected, and the task assignment dashboard helps managers and team members know exactly what to work on next. Users can also communicate with each other through the program, eliminating miscommunication or confusion that can lead to delays or missed deadlines.

Companies that don’t have an organizational method in place will find that their employees’ work suffers and frustration only increases. Keeping teams on the same page requires leaders to implement systems that encourage communication, planning, and organization.

Push for Employee Development

Cultivating an environment of learning encourages everyone to develop their skills in ways that benefit the entire organization. Workers become more knowledgeable and competent in their departments and improve their quality while increasing output.

The good news is that employees do not necessarily need to go back to school or receive fancy technical training to see these kinds of positive results. Simply working on soft skills (also known as interpersonal skills) can help people become better leaders and advance in their professional careers.

Encouraging everyone in the workplace to develop their soft skills will help build a better business culture where people are able to work with each other and communicate clearly. BizLibrary is a great resource for companies to find training programs, videos and exercises to help their team develop these important skills. Their large library has material and online courses to help employees hone skills like leadership, time management, and communication.

Businesses with highly skilled employees can see boosted productivity, more engaged workers and eventually, higher revenue. Encouraging your employees to continue their education by improving their soft skills will lead to a more productive and happier culture that thrives on learning.

Reward Jobs Well Done

People like to be praised. It keeps them motivated and willing to go the extra mile. However, promoting a culture that recognizes improvements sometimes takes more than just a pat on the back. According to O. C. Tanner Institute’s report, a third of workers agreed that their work efforts often go by unnoticed, and only half felt that they were appreciated by their coworkers and management.

Designing a reward system that encourages workers to hit their goals and improve their results is easier than ever with tools like YouEarnedIt. The incentive program helps managers track productivity with analytical reports for accurate development recognition. Rewards can be personalized for teams with things like gift cards or fun team experiences.

A recent study found that businesses that offered incentives saw a 44 percent boost in productivity.

We all want to be recognized when we hit our goals, so adopting an incentive program that rewards improvement is a great way to encourage employees to keep up the good work.

Conclusion

Building a company culture does not happen overnight.

If you want to create a work environment where everyone can do their best, you must implement systems that encourage positive changes and empower team members to do better and be better.

This process doesn’t have to be difficult; it’s all about finding strategies that work for both you and the people that make up your organization.

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This article, “You Can Thank Us Later – 3 Ways to Build a Better Company Culture” was first published on Small Business Trends