Your company culture affects everything from employee productivity to retention, which means it also affects your profits. It becomes even more challenging when you’re building team culture for a global workforce.
Here are some tips to help you build a culture that works when your team is distributed around the world:
Work through your issues
Too often, managers’ personal issues impact their employees. On a small scale, this might involve a manager creating a bad atmosphere in the office or in a meeting because they had an argument with their spouse.
On a larger scale, this can mean employees don’t feel they can ask questions, take risks, or even get support from their managers.
The solution is for managers to work through their issues so that they’re aware of when they’re doing these things. They know how to compartmentalize and don’t project on to employees just because they’re the nearest target.
Managers are responsible for the atmosphere of a whole team or department. Your senior leaders’ attitudes have an even bigger effect on building team culture throughout your organization.
So it’s imperative that they know how to deal with their own emotions and feelings and learn how to not take them out on others. In fact, companies with the best cultures are 72% more likely to invest in leadership training. That really goes to show the impact it can have.
Not doing so in the short-term will hurt your business results. In the long-term, it will lead to traumatized employees who carry that weight around for the rest of their careers.
Invest in training
Training doesn’t just help level up employees’ skills, it also gets everyone on the same page.
For instance, a communications workshop can help people learn to communicate in the same way, preventing confusion and miscommunications.
Reskill when you implement AI
Say what you want about its furniture, but when Ikea implemented AI, it didn’t lay off 8,500 customer support agents it no longer needed. The company knew those employees had useful internal knowledge.
Instead, IKEA reskilled them and turned them into interior designers. Resulting in more than $1B in new revenue in the first year.
How long it takes to learn internal knowledge, and how much is lost when people leave, often gets overlooked when businesses lay people off in favor of AI. But even AI needs training, and it has to learn about your business from somewhere.
Instead of losing employees who’ve taken time and energy to get to know your business, reskill them so that they can work in a different department. It’s cheaper and faster than hiring people for a new team or department. And it goes a long way towards building team culture and maintaining it for the long-term.
It looks good for your employer brand, too. And it supports employee morale because team members are less worried that their jobs will be outsourced to AI. They know that even if they are, your company will still do its best to retain them.
Meaning they’re also less likely to quiet quit because that loyalty becomes a two-way street.
Create a culture of psychological safety
Now, more than ever, your business needs to be somewhere your employees feel safe to air their opinions and take risks. The only way they can grow in their careers is through being curious and trying new things. That can only be done with supportive managers.
Taking risks means failures will happen, but innovation lies on the other side of it. Your business can only become an industry leader if you’re building a team culture of psychological safety.
Be clear about your company purpose and values
A shared sense of purpose, and shared company values, get everyone rowing in the same direction. They help reduce the risk of conflicts because any decisions can be measured against the same guidelines.
And this does matter. When teams have a shared sense of purpose and values, there’s a 17% performance increase compared to teams that don’t.
If you want to instill your purpose and values, you need to communicate them clearly. Print them out and hang them in your office; remind people before important meetings; give them a page on your website; showcase them in your job descriptions when hiring; include them in your onboarding materials.
The more you mention your values, the more your team will embody them.
If you haven’t decided on your purpose and values yet, or you feel it’s time for a refresh because your business has gone through some changes, include your employees in the process. Ask them what words they associate with your business and look for any patterns. This can be a great approach to building team culture from the bottom up.
Sending an employee survey via Workrowd can help you get the information you need. Get in touch today to book your free demo.
Get your tech stack right
When you invest in the right technology, it can scale with your business.
Some tools work when your business is small — like managing a schedule using Excel for a team of five people. But these systems can break when your team expands.
So don’t just pick what works for your team now. Pick what will work for your future business goals, too. That way your employees won’t have to adjust to using new tools when you do expand. It’s already an embedded part of your culture.
Tools can also help with building team culture by making it easier for employees to communicate with colleagues overseas. Even if they’re in different time zones, using tools like ClickUp or Asana, and making comments on something like Google Docs, means employees can still share feedback and collaborate on projects.
Invest in your employee groups
Having employee groups and supporting them are two different things. Just because they’re a feature of your business, that doesn’t mean that you’re getting the most from them.
For instance, do they each have their own budget for holding trainings or events? Do they have a senior executive to vouch for them? Do they have effective leaders in place who can support members and foster conversations?
What about a tool that makes building team culture easier and empowers employees to manage and participate in groups? Using Workrowd, you can organize your employee groups, programs, and events and encourage your team to take part. Get in touch today to find out more.
Conclusion
Building team culture matters whether your business is office-based, hybrid, or remote.
When it comes to building team culture for a global workforce, the key is to welcome your employees in a supportive atmosphere. Treat them with understanding and compassion, and lead by example.
If your managers are open and honest, your employees will be, too. If your managers act like it’s everyone for themselves, your employees will do the same thing.
