It’s every business leader’s dream to have a super productive team. Yet it hardly makes sense to expect productivity from your staff when your working environment actually discourages it.
Singaporean office workers are among the world’s hardest working people, but also the least productive—with “productivity” broadly defined here as output with some measure of efficiency.
Not that that’s entirely the fault of management or the human resources department, because many organisations with the purest of intentions unwittingly set the stage for lower levels of productivity by creating a counter-productive corporate culture.
Industry observers have linked employee productivity to company culture, citing research as well as how the creation of this culture might have its roots in a larger, prevalent social attitude towards what hard work is and how productivity is assessed.
But when you take a closer look at what constitutes a company culture that discourages productivity, you’ll find that much, if not all of it may be remedied by planning, decisive action, and the cooperation of everyone involved.
Productivity Killers
The culture, or the environment in which members of a team perform the actual work, stems from the organisation’s values, or creed, if you will. While these values may be good in themselves, they sometimes become expressed or applied in a way that is detrimental to the company’s culture as a whole, which in turn has a negative effect on productivity.
Say you have a company that believes in being data-driven and results-driven, which are inherently laudable values. If, because of these values, team members become “slaves to the data” without proper analysis or interpretation, or focus on attaining results with no regard for quality or the means of achieving them, a toxic workplace culture may ensue.
Staff at such a business may operate with a sort of blind, routine obedience to statistics with little or no incentive for innovation or finding ways to improve efficiency. And with loosely defined parameters for achieving results, staff may resort to shortcuts or cultivate a spirit of unhealthy competition that dampens morale.
The Harvard Business Review and Forbes are among the many who offer proof of the way positive workplace cultures boost productivity. But to begin addressing the effects of a less-than-ideal culture on team productivity as a whole, you’ll need to identify the contributing factors at your organisation.
Tell-tale Signs of A Toxic Corporate Culture
While by no means an exhaustive list, the following behaviours may give you a fair indication of what to look out for when evaluating whether your organisational culture could use an overhaul.
● Bullying
● Discrimination or favouritism
● Excessive absenteeism
● Gossiping
● Having a “squeeze all you can out of your team” approach to task allocation
● Holding too many meetings
● Little or no appreciation or recognition for workplace achievements
● Little or no motivation
● Little or no work-life balance
● Overloaded team members
● Over-emphasis on attendance or the number of hours worked
● Poor communication between management and staff and amongst team members
● Poor working conditions
● Poor workflow management
● Team members doing the bare minimum
● Team members taking sides or forming cliques
● Unclear instructions and expectations
● Unnecessary collaboration
● Unrealistic deadlines
● Workaholic tendencies
Supplementing your observations by asking for direct feedback is highly recommended, particularly when feedback is sourced confidentially in an informal, conversational manner.
Arguably even more effective would be to conduct a sort of “self-examination of conscience” to see how you may have unintentionally contributed to the current state of your organisation’s culture.
Re-creating Your Corporate Culture
Awareness and acknowledgement are the first steps towards breathing new life into your workplace culture to enhance overall productivity. Though this may seem obvious, it can be hard for a business of any size to accept that something is wrong on an organisational scale which needs careful planning and implementation to fix.
Having identified areas for improvement within the company, you can then formulate a practical strategy with actionable steps for everyone—from upper management down to the team member who joined the company yesterday—to carry out.
Everyone, without exception, has a share in creating your workplace culture, which means that everyone must do their part in revitalising it. Real change, however, must begin with the company’s key decision-makers, from whom the rest of the staff takes their cue and should be able to look to for guidance during your culture transformation.
Management must make sure that the strategy for this transformation is communicated to everyone involved and that everyone understands the need for change as well as their role in making it happen. Careful monitoring will also be necessary to ensure that efforts to re-create your corporate culture are on track.
Quick Company Culture Fixes
While it can take some time to pinpoint problem areas and create a strategy, particularly in large organisations, there are smaller but no less valuable or effective initiatives that may be implemented right away.
● Allow reasonable levels of levity or humour
● Be welcoming to team members with different backgrounds
● Encourage open and transparent communication
● Encourage taking short breaks or time away from the office
● Give staff enough space to work, avoid micromanaging
● Make it a point to say “thank you” and “good work”
● Make sure the objectives of assigned tasks are clear
● Make sure workloads and deadlines are realistic
● Nurture workplace relationships by encouraging non-work-related activities outside of work
● Regularly and openly acknowledge or celebrate even minor achievements or milestones
● Replace non-essential meetings with emails
● See to it that everyone respects everyone else
● Show staff that their feedback is welcome and acted upon
● Show staff that you care about their individual development and well-being
● Start a simple, but regular office exercise or workplace wellness programme
Changing your corporate culture for the better doesn’t happen overnight, especially in large, long-established organisations where the culture has been entrenched for decades. But patience, political will and pure intentions may only go so far to effect significant change, which is why many business leaders turn to specialists to help turn their workplace culture around.
Building Winning Corporate Culture for Businesses and New Ventures at SMU Academy is designed to help business leaders and corporate communication professionals to create the kind of workplace culture that enhances productivity by nurturing creativity and innovation.
As part of the Graduate Certificate in Communication Management programme, this module shows you how your corporate culture can ignite your team members’ passion for what they do and boost their performance as a result.
Understanding what contributes toward strong and weak cultures, assessing a company culture, and mapping out a process for culture transformation are among the learning objectives of this module. Click or tap here to find out how you can get started on the foundations of your successful company culture, today.
