Would you describe your workplace as having a positive culture?

Many people aren’t sure what a workplace culture actually is, but identifying yours and then figuring out whether that is seen as positive or negative, is one of the biggest driving forces towards improving productivity. 

A workplace culture is basically the personality and identity of the workplace. It’s about the feel of the organisation, how happy the employees are, what the business stands for, whether it is a diverse, inclusive and equal place to work, whether there are opportunities for growth, and whether the business has links to charitable organisations. 

There are many different facets which work together to create a workplace culture, but it all comes down to what your business is really about. 

A negative workplace culture is not a good thing. In this case, you need to think about how to create a positive culture in the workplace and focus on those sitting at their office desks every working day. Otherwise, you’re going to find that you’re losing highly experienced staff quite quickly, and you’re struggling to replace them with new talent. Productivity and motivation will be drastically affected as a result. 

How to Assess Your Workplace Culture

Your workplace culture isn’t something you can see, it’s more of a feel than anything else. However, you can assess the different facets that make up your culture and work out whether they’re negative or positive in turn. The more positives you have, the more upbeat and positive your place is to work in, and therefore more positive your workplace culture as a result. 

The single best way to try and work out where your workplace culture is on the positive to negative scale is to ask your employees. 

Your employees are your most important asset, and that means asking them how they feel, and what they think. By doing this, you’re actually increasing positivity in the workplace generally, because you’re helping to boost morale and helping employees to feel valued and listened to. 

You can encourage staff to give you their honest opinions by introducing a staff satisfaction survey. Your survey doesn’t have to carry this specific name, but it will literally be about asking how employees feel and whether or not they’re happy in the current situation. 

This is the ideal chance to ask your employees what they think and how they feel, and provided you make this survey anonymous (and mean it), you can find out some very useful information which can inform changes and decisions from this point onwards. 

Within your survey, ask staff how they feel about the office design, ask them how they feel about the way the office is run, ask for their opinions on management, and ask them what they think about the current culture within the office. 

You can also break down the current culture by assessing the following:

• Do you make ethical business decisions?
• Do you have any links with charitable organisations?
• Do you place importance upon people rather than numbers and statistics?
• Is your business honest?
• Do you have clear routes of career progression available? 
• Is your business diverse and inclusive?
• Does your business offer equality?
• Is your mission statement clear to everyone?
• Does your mission statement focus on people?

These are all very important points when identifying whether or not your current workplace culture is positive or whether it could do with some changes being made. 

Remember, a positive workplace culture will have many benefits. You’ll be able to access creative ideas from the boardroom table, you’ll notice that staff are more engaged and focused on the job, you’ll find that employee retention is higher and that you also find it easier to attract new talent. 

There is no downside to focusing on your workplace culture and increasing your positivity levels. However, you do need to access the information to make your decisions in the first place.