In the world of startups and young companies, growth is often the most sought-after objective. Inadvertently, building a culture where employees can thrive often gets sacrificed at the altar of growth. Intentional intervention in shaping a positive work environment has outsised payback on employee wellbeing and the overall success of the organisation. Culture is that fertile soil that nurtures not just the seeds of today but forms foundational elements of the company’s future. Today’s acorns become tomorrow’s oak trees and this soil, culture, makes it possible for many such seeds to grow into sky-touching trees.
Establishing progressive people policies early-on not only fosters employee satisfaction but also lays the foundation for long-term growth and stability. By treating employees as partners and drivers of growth, companies can create a work environment where individuals feel valued, motivated, and empowered to contribute their best.
From building a culture grounded in trust and flexibility, to cultivating an inclusive and diverse environment that is conducive for open communication and personal growth, it is essential to consider various aspects that build a resilient, vibrant, and progressive culture.
1. Culture of Trust: If you build your organisation purely on optimised performance tracked through questionable surveillance methods, you may reach heights in no time, but there will be heavy costs to pay. Employees who have entrusted their careers to you will demand trust in return. And in trust-deficit situations, all growth achieved through stringent control and micromanaging will likely get lost in employee turnover. On the other hand, if you choose to build your organisation on the foundation of trust, you will get yourself a team that feels valued, engaged, and committed to the growth of organisation. Leaders must work to ensure that there is trust-surplus in every interaction an employee has with the organisation, directly through policies or indirectly by the way-of-working principles.
2. Flexibility: Requiring a certain number of hours to be clocked in, and denying occasional requests to work from home or time off for personal reasons may seem like good ideas to promote productivity and overall growth. But each time it happens, an ounce of humanity gets stripped off. Your employees are individuals with complex personal lives—there are caregivers, new parents, long distance-commuters, or those who have medical conditions. Respecting their individual needs and offering them flexibility creates a positive environment for people to truly care about their work, their team members, and the organisation, leading them to go above and beyond, when the organisation asks them to put their best work forward.
3. Diversity: There is enough evidence that diversity—of disciplines, experience levels, gender, and other demographic factors—help teams produce better results by preventing routine groupthink. Acknowledging these differences and unique challenges, we must provide accommodations to allow people bring their whole (usually their best) selves to work. Forward thinking leaders must build inclusive practices in hiring, promoting, compensating, time-off and deliberately seek out other opportunities to champion the cause of diversity.
4. Honest & Open Communication: Honest and clear communication in an organisation not only aligns everyone, but it is the foundation of every voice being heard and trusted. Leaders must be clear in their vision and make sure the vision is aligned at all levels of the organisation. In a diverse organisation, communication must be multi-channel, multi-dimensional and hyper-customised to the audience.
Employees are more likely to put discretionary effort once they align with the organisation’s purpose and they have the autonomy required to create the outcomes expected. There will always be occasions where more effort will be needed to tide over a crisis or seasonal nature of work. Managers must set transparent expectations and consider employee feedback to handle such situations.
5. Listen & Remedy: Organisations must establish, either through tech or otherwise, a low-latency method of hearing the most recurring causes that comes in between an employee and her intent to produce the best work. Not done, or not done well, these snowball into crisis that adversely impacts the employee and the organisation both. What the organisation “hears” must be taken up to different layers of leadership, analysed, and resolved without letting them fester.
Partner – Talent and Operations
MathCo
6. Enabling Growth: Finally, a company can only grow as well as its individual employees do. It is imperative for modern organizations to provide avenues for its employees to grow from different ways of learning. These might be synchronous or asynchronous, on job or off—technology today enables multi-channel, multi-venue learning that organisations must offer its employees. We must actively promote and reward situations where employees are encouraged to punch beyond their weight and learn from failures. This needs a culture of servant leadership. Building leaders at all levels becomes crucial—leaders equipped with emotional intelligence, encouraged, and empowered to take the role of mentors who can help employees in many ways than one.
In essence, a company does not achieve sustainable growth despite diversity and employee wellbeing, but because of it. An environment that allows a healthy balance between work and life, an inclusive work culture that values diversity, opportunities to develop oneself, and the presence of psychological safety can help people bring their best selves to work and be committed to the organisation’s overall growth.
