How to build a great office culture

Appreciate, encourage and make your employees feel important.

A good office culture has become one of the prime deciding factors among job seekers these days.

Besides a good remuneration, what professionals seek is flexible working hours, a great team to work with and work from home options.

So what is it that you can do to ensure the best office culture for your workplace?

Build a team with intention

It is said that with each new hire, you set the tone of your company.

Which means, you cannot just pick and choose new hires for your company.

Soft skills count just as much as technical skills.

When you are hiring talent for your company, make sure they are a good cultural fit.

Show appreciation where required

The need to reprimand and show discipline might be necessary to ensure a good and proper work environment. Equally important is to appreciate.

Employees may treat good feedback as an HR tactic, but the truth is that good feedback and rewards keep employees motivated and willing to work harder to achieve results.

Give credit where it is due

An extension of the previous point, whenever you feel an employee has done well or has gone beyond the call of duty, make sure that people know who is to thank.

Giving credit where it is due will surely help increase productivity.

Decrease the competitive streak

A little healthy competition is good when it comes to motivate people to achieve targets and goals but just in order to increase the productivity, don’t make work a competition ground.

Make sure that people work hard together, and not against each other.

Competitive streaks at the workplace make for a bad work culture and give rise to disputes and disgruntled employees.

Treat employees as allies

Your employees are working for the same ultimate goals as you are. Let them feel that they are part of the team.

Consider their suggestions and let them take an active part in the corporate decision making.

This not only gives you a chance to get valuable employee feedback, it also might provide you some really good workable ideas.

Besides, when an employee feels that they have a say in the workings of the company, they feel involved and this engenders loyalty which also helps employee retention and employer branding.

No favouritism and no hazing

Human nature dictates that we as humans will like some kinds of people better than others and fact remains that no matter how many like-minded people you bring into an office, they will still be a mixed bag of personalities.

In these cases, you should remember to keep your personal likings and prejudices out of the equation.

Besides being damaging to your reputation, it is just plain wrong.

Just because you don’t like someone does not mean they are not talented.

Another thing to keep in mind is about when you have employees leaving your company.

You might feel betrayed and a little disappointed, but that isn’t reason enough to haze them.

Make sure you do all you can to make their departure smooth and hate-free.

In fact have them give an exit interview.

Take their input on what it was that lured them to the other company.

If nothing else, it could help you formulate your own strategies on employee retention and future recruitment.

Make work fun

Waking up shouldn’t be about dreading the moment the alarm rings for work.

It should include excitement for the new day ahead.

This attitude change can be brought about in the employees when you ensure that work is fun.

Plan fun activities at least once a week -- organise team parties, make coming to work an experience, not a task.

Lead image used for representational purposes only. Image: Robert Galbraith/Reuters