Let’s face it, your staff are the most important element of your business. Often they are your first point of contact with your customers. You must treat them like gold and I think it is critical to create an atmosphere that is friendly and somewhat fun to work at. Lets be real work is work but you can work hard and have some laughs with your fellow co-workers and enjoy the day. In addition to your team getting along which is much easier when you have a smaller organization, is the atmosphere you create in the work place. I had to laugh I went into an office the other day and on the fridge it said “Pay for your drinks or we will stop buying them”. Unfortunately that right there tells a lot about a company’s culture. How much does it really cost especially if you have a smaller staff to supply soft drinks in your work place and even if you charge for them which some larger organizations feel they need to, the few people that don’t pay (although unfair to others that do) really does not cost you a lot.
I think little perks like free drinks is good for the office culture. Another thing we do is have pizza Friday’s all paid for by our company. Personally, I will reschedule meetings around our pizza lunches as I find them to be a good time. We sit and chat and take a break from work for a while and enjoy some laughs. We all get a long good and have similar sense of humours so it always ends up being a good time. As a manager of the company I am always thinking of ways to improve our culture. For instance we are moving downtown to a cool area of our city and I am hoping our staff which is all under 30 will enjoy the fast pace atmosphere of downtown and all the cool places to eat and cafes etc.
Office culture is certainly one of the strategies we strive to improve in our company and it should be in all companies I think. Even if you are a large company you can improve your team culture. All larger companies are segmented into teams and if you make the culture in your team work, you will be more productive as a team. Thanks for listening.
