Every small business owner knows that culture is critical to a company’s success. A healthy environment can lead to increased productivity, higher morale, and better retention rates. But what happens when your team is just getting started? How do you build a strong culture in the early days of your business? Here are seven tips for building a strong company culture as a manager: 7 Tips for Building a Strong Company Culture Build your team strategically. When choosing employees, it’s important to hire for both skill and cultural fit. Look for people who have a good track record of performance, but also make sure they’re a good cultural fit. When choosing team members, look for those who are likely to be good mentors for other members of the team. And don’t forget about bringing different personalities together: people will learn more from one another if they have different skill sets and backgrounds! Prioritize communication. A small business is a tight-knit environment, and communication is essential to building your team’s culture. Your employees are all working towards the same goal: to make you successful. But how do you keep them on track? How do you make sure they know what’s expected of them at any given time? The answer lies in two-way communication: listening as much as talking. For this reason, it’s important to have an open-door policy where anyone can ask questions; someone who has been around longer should be happy to help out the new guy or gal in any way possible—even if it means spending some extra time with them before leaving work each day! Set clear goals and hold people accountable. Setting goals is one of the most valuable things you can do as a business owner. It gives your employees clear direction, helps them align their work with the company’s mission and vision, and makes it easier for everyone on your team to be accountable for their results. Document and streamline standard operating procedures. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are a must-have for every business. They allow you to create and maintain consistency in the way you do things so that your employees can operate more efficiently and effectively. To begin creating your SOPs, start with a list of all of the tasks that need to be done regularly within your company. Then, decide which ones are critical to operations and make sure they fall under one of the following categories: Core competencies – Tasks that define who you are as an organization Key processes – Tasks that are essential for running the company Customer touchpoints – Tasks customers will interact with most often Provide opportunities as your business evolves. As your business continues to grow, your company culture must evolve with you. Whether you’re hiring new employees or expanding into other areas, make sure to provide opportunities for team members to grow. This can include offering training and education programs for your team members, as well as providing opportunities for advancement within the company. Encourage team members to provide feedback. As a small business owner, you can’t be everywhere all the time. If you’re lucky, your team is already fully committed to their roles and responsibilities and will communicate when they have questions or concerns. However, it’s not always that easy. You’ll need to find ways to encourage them to provide feedback regularly so you can stay on top of what’s happening in each department. Celebrate your wins. You may think that celebrating wins is just a nice way to make the people who work for you feel good, but it has some big benefits. Celebrating your wins can help keep everyone motivated and build trust between team members. Building a strong culture takes time. But it’s worth the effort. When you have a cohesive group of people working together, they can achieve more than you could ever ask of them as individuals. They’ll take pride in their work and enjoy coming to work every day because of their camaraderie with each other and with you. And when your team is happy, so are you.
