How to grow your business by improving your business culture

How to grow your business by improving your business culture

I’m sure you’ll agree that when growing a business, many leaders will just look at the revenue and profit coming in, and whether their marketing communications have an ROI.

But what if I told you that your business culture has a direct impact on revenue and cost base – so to effectively grow your business, always remember to look at the culture and how you can improve it.

5 ways to improve your overall company culture, in the long and short term:

1. By providing the right systems, transparency and values to live and lead by, your people are much more likely to connect purposefully with what they do in a proactive and productive way. Bringing positive innovation and creativity, going the extra mile on customer service, saving time by getting the job done, and not getting lost in confusion.

2. By improving systems you will also provide customers with a better experience, which will turn into more revenue, but you will also save time and money in productivity with better retention and less turnover costs.

3. Build trust by ensuring that all communications are clear and transparent. Share success, challenges and recognise and reward valuable contribution from your team(s). Communicate with purpose and passion to engage and motivate your people.

4. Listen to the people you work with, inspire them and show that you trust them by embracing collaboration, working flexibly and encouraging strong co-working relationships. Changing the physical environment can boost internal culture too.

5. Take the time to improve your internal culture, it will always be a work in progress so don’t forget to make time to nurture it.

HBR has done research, which shows that you need to focus on social connection to create a high performing team.

And Forbes says that culture is a company’s single most powerful advantage.

But this doesn’t happen overnight. Authentic and purposeful culture happens over several months, if not years with a lot of focus and truly putting it at the heart of what they do.

Although informal events where people can bond over non-work related topics can build social capital, you can’t just have a couple of quizzes and a few pizza nights to embed and create a thriving a culture.

What’s more, today’s market for talent is hyper competitive, and employees expect much more from their employees – especially as we see more of Gen Z enter the workplace. Gen Z look at the holistic picture of a culture inside and outside of the organisation with societal topics of sustainability, inclusion and wellbeing on what they want to see in organisations. Intention is not enough: they want to see results, and they want to see action to back it up.

For most organisations, it is also where they can see a threat. According to Edelman, 60% of people have a default emotion of distrust, and people are now looking for business leaders to drive forward to create change – so a new expectation for all organisations is to lean into these challenging conversations because the worst conversation to have is not having one at all – which will massively impact the culture of your organisation.

5 quick tips to start your connection with your business culture:

1. Look and listen to how people are behaving with each other, with customers, and with systems.

2. Refresh or spend more time instilling your values which should include societal issues.

3. Update ways or working and systems in line with who you are, what you do, and why you do it.

4. Create role models and influencers amongst your colleagues.

5. Build more general time in to make connections with each other – for work and non work-related reasons.

Getting to grips with complex societal issues, and having the confidence to enter a conversation can be challenging. We understand how important it is to get it right and not appear tone-deaf or just like you’re ticking a box.

If you need any help, get in contact – our consultants and experts can help you understand the topic more, create an engagement strategy and develop a plan that works for you and your business.

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