Everyone’s talking about workplace culture.
Whether you operate in a bustling, consumer-facing environment or you’re behind the scenes at a technology enterprise, the environment that you provide matters. Workplace culture is just that, the environment you create at work.
Culture is defined as “a set of ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular group or society”. A great example is queuing in the UK – we believe it’s good manners to wait for our turn, and we want to be polite… don’t we?
Workplace culture follows the same idea. Think about how your workday is structured. Is there open communication between teams? Are meetings well structured? What does your company place a lot of value on compared to the other businesses in your industry?
These are all things that contribute to your workplace culture, or the environment that you’ve manufactured for your teams. As experts in people and teams, The Colour Works are proud to work with international businesses to deliver team workshops designed to create a vibrant workplace culture.
The first thing you need to know about workplace culture is that improving it is not only good for your people, but also for your business. Happy people are likely to be more motivated and engaged at work, and highly engaged employees show 21% greater profitability according to this article in Forbes.
Your workplace culture will often revolve around the people that make up your teams. A team that leads with Sunshine Yellow Energy is likely to display optimism and encourage open, informal communication. Meanwhile, their opposite colour energy, Cool Blue, will add an element of organisation and structure to their day, ensuring tasks get completed to a high standard.
These colour energy preferences can set the standard for the culture of a workplace, which goes a long way to explaining why some individuals thrive at some companies while others become disengaged. However, with good communication and planning you can allow space for the organisation and structure preferred by those who lead with blue energy, as well as the informal, friendly atmosphere favoured by those with more yellow energy.
Usually, The Colour Works Challenge focuses on individuals, and we realise it’s ambitious to attempt to transform your workplace culture in just 5 days, but there’s never been a better time to try! With so many of us changing the way we work again, whether in the office, in the spare room or hot-desking in a cafe, this month’s Colour Works Challenge offers something for everyone.
In this week’s Colour Works Challenge, we’re looking at your workplace culture. We want you to identify the set of ideas, customs and social behaviour that makes your workplace unique. Furthermore, we want to ensure that the workplace culture you have created is working for everyone on your team.
Remember, it’s not just good for your people… it’s good for your business.
So, without further ado, let’s dive into this month’s #ColourWorksChallenge. You’ve got 5 activities spread across 5 days to discover, identify and shape your workplace culture. Let’s get started.
Today is the first day of your workplace culture challenge, so take some time to watch this TED Talk by Adam Grant. In his presentation, Grant discusses the individuals within a team. He breaks them down into Givers and Takers and outlines how these individuals work together.
We’re kickstarting the week with this activity because we wanted to show you that it doesn’t matter what personality types you have within your team, you can still create a vibrant workplace culture in which everyone thrives.
Now you know the importance of every individual within your team, take part in our Team Performance Indicator. The idea of this activity is to identify team strengths and weaknesses and find areas of improvement that can influence the workplace culture.
Simply answer 20 questions about accountability, trust, responsibility and more. Once you’ve finished the survey you’ll be presented with a graph mapping your strengths and weaknesses. We’ll also suggest an activity to help you improve your weaker areas. It’s a fantastic way to put your team and your relationships to the test.
Don’t forget to take a screenshot of the results, you’ll need them for day four’s challenge!
On day one, you watched a TED Talk about how different personality types can work together to create a better working environment. On day two, you looked at your own team’s strengths and weaknesses to find some possible areas for improvement.
Today is just a quick exercise to recap on how we start to shift culture by watching a classic TED talk by Derek Sivers – this is one of our favourites here at The Colour Works, so you may have seen it before… nevertheless we think it’s worth watching again!
After yesterday’s light-hearted Ted Talk, we’re diving into the nitty-gritty of creating the vibrant workplace culture of your dreams.
The culture of any organisation is set by the behaviours and attitudes, rituals, and routines demonstrated by senior leaders – they set the tone and create ‘the way we do things around here’ (Deal and Kennedy).
As we saw yesterday, people follow people (especially if there’s something exciting going on) but don’t forget, culture is everyone’s responsibility. If every person in every team makes a small change, the collective will benefit from significant gains.
So, where to start? Today’s challenge is to get the ball rolling by starting to unearth the differences in perception around ‘the way we do things around here’.
Here are the instructions:
By completing this exercise, you won’t just get some tangible actions to improve your team’s performance, you will also have started a small movement by involving a colleague… and that’s how you take the first step to improving your workplace culture.
Today’s challenge is reflective.
Consider the impact you have on your organisations culture – do you live up to the expectations you have of others? Are there any key take-aways from the weeks challenge you can share? How will you follow-through on the three actions you and your colleague identified yesterday?
In the words of a great leader, Mahatma Gandhi, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’.
Improving your workplace culture starts with you. Actually, the responsibility is on everyone’s shoulders. Look at your company’s mission and values and think about how you can instil them into your working environment.
This week’s challenge is a great place to start. By learning more about what workplace culture is and identifying the strengths and weaknesses in your teams that could be influencing the overall culture. Remember, happy staff are more engaged. And highly engaged employees create more profitable businesses…
The reason it is so hard to change the culture at your work is because it takes a long time to build the habits, behaviours and customs in the first place. Once one person, or a group of people, feel isolated it becomes much harder to correct the behaviours that drove them to feel that way.
That’s why we suggest taking it a step at a time. Small gestures, such as asking people to share their weekend plans in team meetings, will eventually change the dynamic of team relationships. It won’t be long until you have a vibrant workplace culture that everyone is proud of.
If you’ve learnt anything over the last 5 days, it’s how much you can influence employee engagement, morale and motivation by building a better workplace culture. Don’t stop trying now that you’ve completed the challenge!
If you’d like more information about creating a vibrant workplace culture or want to enhance your self-awareness and improve the communication within your team, speak to The Colour Works about our range of solutions.
Keep taking part in our Team Performance Indicator and completing the recommended activities. Make sure company values are supported by everyone and become the leader that your team needs.
If you’ve enjoyed this challenge, don’t forget to share it with your colleagues. It’s much easier to improve workplace culture if all of your colleagues get involved.
We’d love to see you all getting involved in this month’s ColourWorksChallenge. Don’t forget to share your progress as well as your own advice on creating the ideal workplace culture on social media!
Use #ColourWorksChallenge and tag us in your post for a chance to be featured!
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