Yes, Your Company Culture Might be the Problem

One of the biggest buzzwords in logistics, or really any industry, is company culture. The environment where your people work, collaborate, develop, and resolve problems has been show time and again to make a huge impact on their mood and efficiency.

With a positive culture, employees generally feel more comfortable contributing to projects with more precise input. In an ideally positive company culture, employees are always encouraged to share ideas and raise questions.

Many managers and other decision-makers strive to discover all the minor details as to why they are struggling. But sometimes just a little inward thinking (with some outside the box thinking logic) can reveal some of the more deep-seated issues.

So what exactly is company culture? Why is it important? More importantly, what can you do to improve it?

The Importance of Company Culture

Do you enjoy working at your current job?

It turns out that company culture is one of the most important factors employees consider when answering this question. And that makes sense as a positive work environment usually leads to employees placing more value on the work they do.

A positive company culture is a magnet that attracts brilliant minds and talented workers who thrive in a more positive and relaxed work environment. By proxy, this also encourages them to stay in a more long-term position. The atmosphere of freedom that comes with good company culture allows employees such as this to perform better than they might otherwise.

When employees are enjoying their work they tend to stay with a company longer, which leads to a lower turnover rate and improved co-worker relationships. Also, good company culture adds to your brand’s identity and reputation. The way you treat your employees is a reflection of how your employees will treat the work they do and the customers they interact with.

For example, if your company embraces a fun company culture, then this will be reflected in the customers who will see your company as fun-loving, and thus the customers might have more fun buying from your company.

A company with a good reputation behind its name leads to increased trust from consumers. This increased trust of your brand or company leads to consumers spending more on your product or service, which means more sales and more money for you. At the end of the day, having a good company culture boosts efficiency and effectiveness for everyone involved.

Five Ways to Improve Company Culture

Today, there are bootstrapped startups and remote teams that are struggling to establish a good company culture. While this might be caused by limited resources or poor planning, it can be avoided.

Here are five tips for establishing a good company culture...

Establish Clear Company Goals and Values

People who work for a company are usually working together to achieve a specific goal. To establish a good company culture, it’s important to clearly articulate what your company’s values are and what goal you are trying to achieve.

By establishing your company values and goals ahead of time, everyone who you hire will be able to acclimate easier.

This helps to organize how employees view your company, what their limits are, and what the company expects of them. With one common goal, all workers will be guided to work together to accomplish this goal and manage tasks as a team.

Offer Flexibility

Even though company culture should evolve over time, many companies still embrace traditional company culture.

The problem with traditional company cultures is that they often mistreat their employees by neglecting their artistic freedom, force them to work regular working hours and expect them to stay seated at their desks all day.

This is a problem especially for younger employees who value leisure and artistic freedom as a means of improving their efficiency and ability to perform. Thus, it is a good idea to offer your employees more flexibility.

In fact, allowing employees to manage their time on their own is often more effective than forcing them to work on certain tasks at certain times.

An example of this is having more flexible office times.

Recent experiments show that having flexible office hours helps boost workers’ productivity and creativity. This is because workers have more time to take care of necessary personal affairs and thus when they are at the office, they don’t have to worry about these things and can focus more on the task at hand.

Encourage and Empower

Your employees are more than just people that work for you; no matter what their role is, they play an integral part in the success of your company.

This is why it is important to always encourage and empower your team to work hard.

One way to do this is to recognize and reward hard-working and deserving employees so that they are encouraged to continue doing their best work every time.

Promote Trust

Since companies are made up of many people, it is normal for conflicts to arise at times. The best way to handle this is by establishing and promoting trust within the company.

This way, conflicts can be resolved immediately and fairly. Promoting trust within a company will greatly boost co-worker relationships.

Work as a Team

Just like sports, good teamwork is essential for winning the game. For your company to strive towards achieving its goal and vision, the workers must work together as a team.

Good teamwork is the result of a strong team relationship. To establish a strong team relationship within your company culture, employers can organize activities such as team-building.

The key to developing a strong company culture is communication. Receiving feedback from your employees, customers, vendors, and all other stakeholders allows executives to make smart decisions.

Company Culture, The Redwood Logistics Way

One of the things that we pride ourselves on here at the Redwood office is a vibrant company culture. We are more than just co-workers, managers and drivers... we are a tight-knit team. And like all tight-knit teams, we rely on one main thing to keep us going; morale.

Want to see what a lively company culture looks like? Check out our Facebook page and follow us for pictures from our recent events and office shindigs!