Secrets of HR: 6 elements of a great workplace culture

Secrets of HR: 6 components of a great workplace culture

December 18, 2024 5:30 AM

When a company creates a culture where people feel happy, confident and unified, it sets the tone for every aspect of employees' work. A strong culture also helps with recruitment and retention.

And if this was easy to do, everyone would do it.

But it's not, which may explain the current disconnect in how leaders view their efforts to enhance workplace culture versus how employees feel about it. A survey conducted by Dayforce found that while 84% of executives and 81% of HR leaders said their company invests in culture, only 49% of workers said the same. To ignore this gap is to gamble with talent: Nearly 50% of respondents said they have left a job due to poor company culture.

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If people leaders want to develop a workplace where all employees feel valued, know what's expected of them, and support one another, it will require a long-term investment of intention, time and effort, says Rhett Power, executive coach and CEO of leadership and culture-building company Accountability Inc. To lay the groundwork for improvements, he recommends getting feedback early on from management teams and employees who are influential among their peers.

"Start with a sit down to talk about purpose, vision and mission," Power says. "Does all that make sense? Do we understand it? Does it really define who we are and what we're doing and why we're here? If you can settle on those, then you can start talking about culture and how you can tie your culture to the mission and the purpose, and you can tie the work to it and the goals. Then it's a matter of getting everybody to buy into it and agree that this is what we want to do, and here is how we're going to do it."

Once this initial work has been done, Power advises leaders to make these six culture-building elements a permanent part of their company.

Accountability

Employees should know how they fit into the organization, and leadership can ensure this by setting clear deliverables and expectations, Power says. When workers know what their role consists of, what their timelines look like, how their performance is measured and how their work ties to the mission of the company, accountability is viewed as a positive thing.

"When you have an accountability structure in your business, it tends to be a fair place to work, because everybody's measured on what they deliver," he says. "Setting up structures that let people know what they're supposed to be doing, how they're supposed to be working and what's expected of them relieves a lot of stress."

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Purpose

Employees' connection to a company is strengthened when they truly understand its positive impact. This is something that starts with leadership, Power says, noting that if they are unable to explain their company's mission, it's guaranteed that everyone else in the company struggles to identify it as well.

"It goes beyond just putting slogans up all over the office; we tend to ignore those signs after a while. Connecting people to purpose is a continual effort… you do have to find ways to do it," he says.

"I've [worked with] a CEO [who has] about 250 people in his organization, and he eats a meal with everybody in the organization at least once a year so he can talk about purpose, he can talk about their ideas and what they think needs needs to happen and needs to change and what he can do for them. And I've talked to those people after [those meals] and everybody walks away with a clearer sense of where they're going that year, what they want to achieve, what they want to do, what their role can be in it. It's a way for him to connect to his people, and they can connect to him, and therefore [they're] connected as a team."

Support

One of the things Power helps all his clients implement is a "got your back" versus a "watch your back" approach, establishing a foundation of trust and teamwork.

"Everybody [should] understand that this is a safe space," he says. "They can share their ideas. They can make mistakes. They can ask for help, which is huge. If I don't understand something, I can say, 'Can you clarify that for me,' instead of walking away from a meeting saying, 'I think I understood,'... but too scared to ask. [Create] a place where people feel like they can contribute, ask questions and have a voice."

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Positive intent

A supportive structure should include the confidence that no matter what, employees will communicate from a place of positive intention — a method that represents high standards of professional courtesy and a commitment to the company's mission. This is especially important in a time of social and political divide among employees in many workplaces, Power says.

"The way we talk to each other is critical to teamwork [and to] getting things done," he says. "I'm going to assume that if you have a problem, it's not personal. We [should] talk to each other in a way that says, 'I respect you. You respect me. We have a problem to solve.' [and] positive intent is always assumed."

Values

Like purpose, an organization's values are part of a foundation of trust, and a workforce will not feel connected to them if its values are not made clear and modeled by leadership. When employees know that their values align with their organization's, it builds trust and loyalty. According to leadership and training research company Leadership IQ, a well-defined set of values leads to a 115% higher engagement level among employees.

"[Leaders need to ask,] when we have tough decisions to make, are we making them based on our values, or are we making them based on something else?" Power says. "If your values are accountability and courage and whatever else, and you don't make courageous decisions as a business, people disengage [or] they quietly quit.

Training

Training at all levels within an organization must be more than lip service, Power says. Not only does this investment allow those currently in management positions to lead better, it sets an organization up for long-term success by creating a list of potential leaders who can be promoted from within when the time is right.

"You've got to have a bench of people who can join your management team," Power says. "Then, as you're building layers in the organization, you've got to have people that you bring up.

But be intentional about it. Spend time with it. Give people resources. That's part of building the culture."