Your company’s corporate culture isn’t just important to keeping the workflow going and ensuring everyone’s happy. It’s the very key to unlimited success. If the company’s growth oriented, it’s even more important to be able to properly assess how well everyone’s getting along, and tweak that which isn’t working before you have a full on uprising on your hands!
Crafting a corporate culture that you truly want your business to have is very challenging. Therefore, every single sign indicating that there’s something wrong with your company culture should be responded in the right way. To aid you in identifying the signs, here are five of them that you need to respond to – before it’s all too late.
1. Employees are losing their patience quickly
When this becomes visible to management, you already have a really big problem on your hands. You and your employees need to all realize that overnight successes are extremely rare. A company operating on impatience is a company on the brink of failure in most cases.
Impatience leads to narrow-minded decisions that lead the company away from the big picture (ie., future expansion and growth). Perspective and focus are key to current and future successes. Patience is also key to keeping everyone happy with and inline with each other and the company’s goals.
When impatience starts to rear its ugly head on a regular basis, you need to step in, have a meeting with everyone and get their input as to what’s causing the problem. Then find an amicable solution that also fits within the company’s bottom line.
2. You’re noticing the emergence of barriers throughout the staff
Barriers can come in many forms, depending on the type and amount of business you do, along with the sheer size of your staff. Say you have managers who work below you and you’ve been telling them about a rather large expansion project that’s going to be taking place in a few month’s time…
You start talking to a newer staff member one day and quickly realize she has no idea about the upcoming project. After asking her manager why she wasn’t informed, you get some sort of excuse like “Need to know – she didn’t need to know” or something similar.
These and many other types of barriers aren’t terribly empowering to anyone, least of all those on the bottom of the company totem pole. Worse, your entire staff will be soon infected by this, and a sense of bitterness and a flippant sort of “Who cares?” attitude will quickly emerge, potentially leading to the downfall of the company – or at the very least, abysmal turnover rates.
Your goal as the company’s supreme leader should be to eradicate all but only the most essential barriers, so everyone can come together cohesively and help catapult you to the top (or keep you there)!
3. You’re getting the increasing feeling that nobody really cares anymore
Given the discussion in the last paragraph, you better know that when it becomes clear that more than a very small percentage of your employees don’t seem to care about their jobs, you’re in a real mess. Whether someone is a clerk, factory worker, sales rep, or architect; they have to care about their job or you, the employer, will always suffer the consequences.
Some employees just won’t care about their jobs, that’s reality. When it becomes the norm, rather than the exception, it’s largely a result of poor management. Core values like drive, accountability and a sense of connection to you and your company’s goals swiftly fly out the window when this disease infects your staff.
Overlook a lack of empathy in your staff and you do so at your own peril!
4. Management appears to be just going through the motions
If you’re a small company with no management but you, then hopefully this isn’t an issue you have to worry about! However, as a business continues to grow, new leaders will need to emerge to keep the wheels turning day-to-day. When those managers are just punching a time card – managing rather than leading; keeping the status quo intact rather than trying to make things better for the company and it’s employees – then you have yet another scenario that leads to a disconnected staff.
This problem effects efficiency, invention, and inspiration across the board. After all, your managers need to not only lead your staff into the great unknown with supreme confidence, they also need to inspire the young hotshots on the lower rungs to aspire to one day manage their own team. This is how effective growth happens – grooming from within your existing ranks. Cultivating the best, so your company shoots to the top of your industry and remains there for decades to come.
If you notice this happening, it’s time to shake up your management team. Those who don’t care anymore (or never did to begin with) need to go ASAP!
5. Nobody in the company is striving toward specific goals
This is similar to management merely going through the motions. Only with this problem, it’s company-wide. Worse, this is again, a problem with upper management. No systems are in place to track your employee’s progress, they have no clue what they’re striving toward. They might as well get a job at 7-Eleven for all the support and guidance they’re receiving.
There are a number ways to make your employees feel more engaged in the job they’re doing, such as using one of the many employee engagement apps available out there and/or making sure you schedule time with them – sit them down with yourself and their manager(s) to track their progress, provide feedback, and give them something to strive toward (such as gravitating to management or other, more important positions within the company).
Failure to engage your employees and make them see there’s a light at the end of the tunnel is crucial to your success. It’s also essential to offer feedback on a job well done, or not done as well as it could be, to ensure they’re constantly improving and growing professionally.
Final Thoughts
Failing to catch these warning signs of a wrongly rooted corporate culture will lead your company to inevitable disaster down the road. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled and an ear to the ground to make sure everyone, including you, are as grounded and fulfilled as possible in the work you all do.