What’s an ideal company culture? How important is it to thrive in your business? And how can you maintain it in these challenging times when the panorama is transitioning from the office to working from home?
A company’s ethos creates its culture. Developed through time, these are values, expectations, and practices that serve as a GPS to navigate the actions of its members. A positive culture will lead to more-than satisfactory performance and thrives, while a negative one will reap its mediocre-to-dysfunctional output, no matter how great the company is.
Studies show that a healthy company culture is 1.5 times more likely to experience revenue growth of 15 percent or more over three years and 2.5 times more likely to experience significant stock growth over the same period.
In another survey, it shows 56% of employees find a good workplace culture to be more important than salary.
“I AM BECAUSE WE ARE” – A Great Company Culture Practice
One example of a great company ethos, translating into a positive culture is the practice of “Ubuntu.”
There’s a popular story about an anthropologist, doing her research on a tribe in a remote African village, who decided to reward the children as her farewell gift when her work was almost done.
She placed a bag of candies under the tree and asked the children to line up 100 meters away from the goodies. She told them it was a race and whoever got to the goodies first will win and take the entire bag as a prize.
When the signal to proceed rang off, something amazing happened. Instead of running for the candies, the children walked towards them, hand in hand, leaving no kid behind.
When asked why they didn’t race against each other, the answer never failed to amaze – “How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”
This philosophy is known as “Ubuntu” which translates to “I am because we are.”
Ubuntu is the perfect company culture that one can adhere to thrive in all times, but especially during trying times. From the employer to its employees, there are no supernumerary characters. All are key players, main protagonists, in achieving the company’s vision, mission and goals.
Two is company, and so is three, four and more… one is a wanderer or working remotely
So how can you communicate a company culture of Ubuntu, when everyone works remotely and scattered around the globe?
Here are three strategies so you can maintain a great working company culture:
- Encourage open communication
The communication line must be open to everyone at all times. No matter the time difference or the geography, connectivity is effortless now a days. As long as the company can leverage the right technology, communication can be easy through emails, chats, video calls, forum, and the list can go on.
Through these lines, everyone can share the happenings, goals, achievements and even rooms for improvement and bring the entire company together.
- Encourage accountability
Incorporate the company culture in your work at all times. Even if working remotely and in isolation, you can still maintain the company’s ethos through your produce. Be accountable to the products and services you represent wherever, whenever. Be mindful that you are the stamp of the company and whatever you do will reflect to yourself and the organization.
- Continue to improve
There’s a tendency to be complacent and reach a point of satiation in everything. But this shouldn’t translate to inconsistencies in performance and not continue to improve. If there’s a need to adapt to newer strategies and techniques that will form and upgrade the company culture, then welcome change. Tradition can be good, but if change can serve everyone better, don’t be a fool not to. Company culture doesn’t grow overnight, after all. It’s a continuous learning process.
