So, what really is team culture? In each workplace, the culture of its teams has a major impact on its environment, operations, and atmosphere. Learning about the key identifiers of a good team culture can help you find one during your job search. Alternatively, discovering how to build a healthy culture within your organization can help you gain a competitive edge. These team culture tips are needed in today’s war on talent. Below I have pointed out a few team culture tips or characteristics of this important component in retaining and attracting talent and insuring you as a job seeker join the right fit for you.

Team Culture is a combination of values, beliefs, and behavioural norms that people share and the behaviours that these factors cause.  A company’s culture manifests in how its leaders and followers behave on a day to day basis, interacting with each other in meetings for example, handling conflicts, performing job duties in general, and silly things like obeying company rules, it’s an important organizational component.  Here are 5 tips to help identify and build your team culture.

  1. Identify your current culture?
  • Leadership, now not everyone thinking they are a general, but people who will stand up in a meeting and take ownership of a project/duty and then retreat back to their role once the tasks at hand are completed.
  • A good team culture involves a majority of workers upholding values and behavioural “norms” that support other people, everyone giving each other respect, listening to each other and in general help the organization achieve its business goals.
  • A good culture will engage workers more. People will know what to expect and around the likes of Employee engagement,
  • It reduces employee turnover. If people are fully engaged it’s less likely they will entertain Recruiters.
  • Always a tricky one for people. If you can bring up an issue that will engage conflict, with a strong culture you know what to expect and that the issue at hand will be listened too and dealt with in a meaningful manor.

How do I build a good team culture?

Let’s dig in more, Building a good team culture can give you many advantages including the ones mentioned above. Have a look at the below steps and see if these steps can help.

2. Review your team culture.  Try understanding your existing culture. Below is a helpful checklist to get you started? Remember be honest in your answers, (As a jobseeker, it’s worth doing this exercise also)

  • What are your corporate values?
  • Are workers behaviours reflected in the Core values of the business, Is everyone rowing in the same direction
  • Do Managers reflect the corporate values?
  • Is employee’s awareness of your corporate values?
  • What are your employee’s values and are they aligned with Managerial behaviours.
  • What are the shared beliefs among team(s) in relation to supportiveness?
  • Is everyone respecting each other?
  • Does every team member know the business goals?
  • What are the norms for interacting with stakeholders such as colleagues, managers, subordinates, and customers?
  • How do managers communicate, maintain, or improve team culture?
  • What are worker-specific cultural differences that conflict with the team culture?
  • What are the cultural differences between workers? Are they complementary?
  • Is there support in place for healthy staff behaviours?
  • Are there any managerial activities that negatively influence staff behaviours?

Relaxed Team Culture

So now that we know where we stand (Kinda), let’s try developing strategies for improving your team culture

3. Have a look at creating strategies to address each team culture issue you identified above, some of these tips might assist.

  • Look at the physical work environment; does it contribute to a healthy culture? Bring in collaborative spaces, more open plan offices and get people together.
  • Develop stories that support a good culture, using videos and support creativity is a great start.
  • Address collective behaviours that simply are toxic. Eliminate them where possible. Support training on the topic to have a more supportive environment rather than political or blame game.
  • Identify cultural differences between employees that you cannot change,

4. Implement team culture-building strategies.

This can be done via the company leaders, but studies also show that addressing it from the bottom up is equally as effective. Support the culture at all levels and have everyone drive towards the true values and togetherness that the best corporate cultures enjoy.

To successfully build team culture, you need the support of key influencers in your business. For example, at the lower end, popular workers are hugely effective along with supervisors, and managers must accept the culture you’re trying to build. Then, they must help you establish it through their behaviour.

  • Communicate the vision of what you want the team culture to look like to company leaders.
  • Discuss strategies for establishing cultural improvements.
  • Use workshops, inspirational speeches, or other incentives to inspire leaders to become ambassadors for cultural change.
  • Use feedback as much as possible.
  • Activities for promoting a strong company culture, try off site days, team building etc.
  • Use stakeholder feedback and their input to determine differences between your visions for the current team culture. Then, use findings to realign the cultural factors.
  • Review the Leadership attitudes and cultural fit along with their actions, leadership styles, and opinions. Monitor the actions and see if there are any scallywags going against the favoured culture.
  • Identify the negative nelly’s, there attitudes and motivations that deter the growth of a good culture and identify those that undermine the culture.
  • Look at training changes needed to bring management activities in line with your target culture. This can help a lot.
  • To promote a strong team culture, it’s important to show your employees that you value their contributions to it and reward the efforts of a strong culture.
  • Have a Diverse workforce, hear different thoughts and support ideas.

5. Hire the right people.

The culture starts with who you hire. Hiring the right people is always a way to get the cultural factors right from the start. Any business with a strong culture will have a very robust interview process in order to ensure they bring in people with strong cultural values that marry the businesses. They don’t need to be the same personality types, just similar values, two very different things. So there are elements like culture add that needs to be considered.

Diversity and inclusion is also an important element in building culture, click here for more details. Also consider when hiring Software Engineers for example, its critical to showcase your culture. Click here for more details on how to fight for talent within the IT sector, we all know how hard it is to fill those IT jobs.

So there is my 2 cents on Culture. Culture will always be something that brings people together and help with both personal and professional goals. The more aligned people are the better your business will be. As always, reach out if you have any questions or if there is anything I can help with. That’s all for now.

There is lots of information on the interview with regards Culture, a few other links would be – Click Here