How to Avoid the Effects of Negative Organizational Culture in Your Business

Organizational culture is the shared values and beliefs of your employees. Each staff member in your business will have past experiences that shape how they think, their values, and their beliefs. They have certain thoughts on how decisions and tasks should be carried out.

In a healthy organization, the effects of organizational culture on that employee’s performance will be positive.

The culture has to be positive throughout the business for each employee to benefit and feel comfortable. Research found that employees that don’t like their organization’s culture are 24 percent more likely to quit.

In this article, we will tell you about the different signs of negative organizational culture, the effects it can have on your workforce, and how you can change this pattern of negativity through your business.

Let’s dive in.

Negative Organizational Culture and Its Effects

Bad habits may not be something that employees have brought with them from other corporations; they may have been picked up in your business.

For example, if the boss is late every day, then the employees are going to pick up on that and think if he is late everyday then this is okay for everyone else. If high standards aren’t applied every time a piece of work is completed, then standards will start to slip.

Office gossip can be negative in any environment, but in a business, it can be much harder. Employees have to go and be in a room with people that are gossiping about them most days. You want your employees to feel comfortable in their working environment, not feel like they will be ridiculed.

Gossip can cause a negative atmosphere to surround the business, and it can cause a shift in the entire company culture and leave people closed off and guarded. Creating good engagement between employees but also the management in a business is important for everyone to feel connected together and have good relationships.

If all employees do is talk about work all day and not socialize about what they do out of hours, they won’t have that strong bond you want your employees to have.

Changing Negative Workplace Culture: What You Can Do

There are ways you can change the negative organization structure in a business. It does not matter whether you are a CEO or manager, anyone can make the differences to change the business for better.

With bad habits, it’s not just the boss that can make a difference in the way staff act. All employees can influence their colleagues on how they act and complete work.

Set Company Standards

There should be clearly defined standards set in a company, whether that be formally or informally, by having an employee handbook or conversations when a new employee starts.

Standards can be something like making sure your company name badge is in a certain place on your employees’ uniform.

Outline what the standards of the company are and what is expected of them. Make sure remaining employees also keep following these guidelines and this should naturally expel any bad habits that people may have.

Ban Office Gossip

Office gossip is something that should not be tolerated within an office. The effects that gossip can have on an office is not something you want hanging over your business. This could also affect the way your business retains employees, but also if customers hear about how your employees are treated by other employees, they may not want to use your product or service.

You can deal with office gossip by sitting down and talking to the perpetrators but also the victim. It is also a good idea to speak to the office as a whole about problems like this to make sure everyone knows that it is not tolerated.

Organize Regular Team Building Activities

Fostering a positive energy or vibe and engaging employees should not be difficult. You should be able to get along together as a company to work as effectively as you can.

A way of doing this and enhancing social relations in the organization is planning out of team building and work activities together, whether it is just a meal or something more adventurous such as paintballing.

Something where you are all together and not in the working environment can help to build trust and cohesiveness among colleagues. If someone’s birthday is coming up, celebrate it! Bring a cake into the office! It’s a wonderful gesture.

Making an effort with all your employees will make them enjoy work more and want to be there because it’s not all about work. It’s a place they feel they belong and are valued.

Overall, having a good organizational structure and diminishing bad beliefs and practices will help keep the structure strong. Making sure that your retained employees stay happy and positive while also following the company’s values and beliefs will keep the business steady.