A good overall culture can very well be the reason
Eighty-eight percent of employees believe a strong culture is key to business success, according to workplace insight platform Zippia, and more than half of employees go as far as claiming that good workplace culture is more important than salary. And for the most part,
"A corporate culture is a set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterize a company as a whole — and it's usually appointed by the CEOs based on how we want to do things and what kinds of impacts we want to make," says Archer Chiang, the CEO of AI startup Giftpack. "Team cultures are controlled by managers and reflect their stance on the attitudes and behaviors the company shares."
Read more:
A team's culture often mirrors a company's culture to an extent, as the core values of a company should be every manager's priority as well, says Chiang. However, a team culture is more concerned with how a team shares knowledge, how members support one another, the goals they share, the way they communicate amongst themselves — all of which will vary from team to team. Chiang notes that traits such as a cohesive collaboration strategy, good conflict resolution methods, adaptability and an overall feeling of unity are all signs of a happy, productive team.
A study from Forbes found that a workplace with a strong culture will increase employees' productivity, boost morale and increase employee engagement. On the other end of the spectrum, a bad team culture can have the inverse effect and impact things like whether an employee feels comfortable taking their PTO, whether they feel recognized and appreciated at work or just stressed and frustrated.
"In a lot of ways, I think a team's culture can be more impactful than a company's culture," Chiang says. "Because a team culture is actually how an employee experiences work and their environment daily, not just a standard set by the CEO that everyone needs to follow."
EBN recently spoke with Chiang, who shared how companies can go about advocating for better individual team cultures and how it could impact productivity and engagement.
How does having team leaders prioritize their individual team's culture make a difference in employee engagement?
This is going to depend on how the managers choose to run their teams, but it often comes down to communication and recognition and how that impacts human behavior. If a team leader centers values like recognition — whether it's with little gifts or even just sticky notes with kudos or with company announcements acknowledging someone's work in following the company standard — that's going to keep employees happy.
Does giving managers the autonomy to dictate their own team's culture have a positive impact on them, too?
When managers feel like everyone on their team is accountable thanks to the efforts they put in to create a good team culture, and everyone has a positive attitude on working daily, that makes a difference. Because even when there are disasters coming in, managers feel like they can trust their team and everyone can handle it together.
Read more:
As an example, one of our managers used to work at another company where she was handling a lot of her team's jobs at once, but was hardly recognized for her work. Not only did this lead to her being exhausted, she didn't feel like she belonged on her team, and it was hard to want to continue her work as manager. When that same manager started working here at Giftpack, she had to suddenly step away for some time to take care of a sick relative. Unlike her old position, she realized that she didn't have to worry about anything while she was out, and instead was met with positive feedback from her team when she returned.
What steps can be taken to avoid a team culture from becoming toxic?
From the very beginning of a team's culture, there needs to be a focus on communication. This includes surveys being conducted anonymously to collect data on whether there is something that's not working, or something being perceived as toxic. At Giftpack, we use these kinds of communication scores on our teams to be able to identify problems as fast as we can, and then we jump in to start interviewing individual people and teams to get to the bottom of why the systems that they've set up are not aligned.
Avoiding toxicity in teams comes down to being very transparent and being honest about the process from both sides. At the end of the day, no one wants to work in a toxic work environment, and no one's voice wants to be silenced, so just give everyone on your team the platform to be heard.
