Importance of Comfort and Great Work Culture In An Organization

You’ve probably heard the terms like company culture, corporate culture, or organizational culture before. But what exactly do these terms imply?
In this blog, we will try to understand the meaning of these terms and explore further how having great work culture and comfort at a workplace is crucial to any organization.
Work culture can roughly be defined as the overall personality of an organization. It refers to the daily behaviors and beliefs of a set of employees in a company. These behaviors include how they act and engage in the company, the values they ascribe to these behaviors, how employees engage with each other at the workplace, and similar facets of the overall functioning of the organization.
It basically relates to how well the employees understand the vision, mission, and goals of the organization and how well their personal goals align with the company’s goals.

Some examples of work culture

Every company ascribes to different work culture in order to suit their end goal. Some of the examples of organizational culture are as below –

1. Collaborative culture – These companies demand you to work in collaboration and have a team-based culture. This means that people in the company work together to achieve their goals.
2. Company-wide approach – In this type of approach everyone in the company has their own goals and targets, and they work on their own to achieve those targets.
3. Formal culture – In a formal culture you are expected to wear a power suit every day to work and stick to your set hours religiously.
4. Flexible culture – In a flexible culture, you’re allowed to wear whatever seems comfortable to you. This type of work culture allows you to manage your time on your own.
5. Silos culture – Working in silos means operating in a kind of bubble. It can mean operating on your own or as a part of an insular team or department.
6. Interdependent culture – Some companies have a highly interdependent work culture that demands easy and comfortable interdepartmental and interpersonal communication from the employees to achieve the company goal.

These are only some vaguely defined examples of organizational cultures; work cultures are more complex than this. Company culture highly varies depending upon different factors but most importantly it depends on the organization’s objective.

Why having a solid company culture and comfort so important?

How many hours do employees spend at work every day? Is it Eight? Nine? Ten? Or even more than that?  It is quite evident that people spend more than half of their waking hours in the office, so good comfort and great work culture are necessary for each and every employee. This will result in a work environment that is healthy, comfortable, and highly functional.
Comfort often helps people to be happier, and when people are happy, they tend to work hard, which has a positive impact on workplace productivity. By creating a comfortable work environment many tough tasks will be a lot easier to push through.
Functional comfort is also a big part of robust work culture, it helps the workforce to achieve work satisfaction. A functionally comfortable workspace helps when it comes to extracting a little more from your employees. For example, a creative team needs a workstation that is extremely creative and mobile, while a group of developers might need privacy to be more focused.
Strong company culture makes the organization function like a well-oiled machine. It’s where every employee knows their value and acts in accordance with their company’s values.

• Strong company culture and comfort make employees more resilient to change – The modern workforce today is evolving at a speedy pace. With situations like the current pandemic surfacing, employees had to fast adapt to a completely new remote work setup. When a company has a solid work culture, drastic changes like the ongoing pandemic do not hamper the productivity of employees. The workforce is able to adapt to changes quickly and coordinate among themselves to keep achieving their set targets and goals.
• Strong company culture and comfort improves work environment – An organization with a clearly defined work culture is a more pleasant place to work in. Strong work culture will give everyone shared assumptions and help everyone know what’s expected of them and make them work towards that direction. This also makes for more fun and enjoyable workplace where everyone is happy doing their assigned job. It also encourages employees to initiate and take up additional responsibilities and tasks.
• Strong company culture and comfort improves the quality of work – A lack of strong work culture results in unclear alignment to company values. This means that additional efforts have to be put to control the employees, monitor their behavior, and keep them working as efficiently as possible. Having a strong company culture results in the managers having to put fewer efforts to control and monitor their employees, as the employees are already well aligned with the company culture and produce high-quality work.
• Strong company culture and comfort breed teamwork – A strong company culture facilitates coherence in the teams. Individuals with similar values and goals can work much efficiently together to achieve the shared vision. It also enables the employees to know where they stand in the team and trust everyone else to do a good job. Employees also feel valued in a good cohesive team and understand the value of their contribution to the organization.
• Strong company culture and comfort dials up informal learning – Great teamwork and collaboration facilitate informal learning within the group. Most people get their informal training while working on the job, it is something that comes with time and experience while on the job. Teamwork and collaboration help the employees to pick up on informal learning while interacting with their colleagues.

Tips to improve work culture and comfort

Following are some insightful tips on how to improve your company’s work culture and propagate not only the company’s growth but also the employee’s professional and personal growth.

1. Effective interpersonal and interdepartmental communication – Poor communication always leads to confusion and misunderstandings. Communication within an organization should always be precise and appropriate, and one should be very proper in terms of choosing tones and words while communicating. If an employee disagrees with another, then rather than keeping quiet raising a voice will help in preventing further conflicts among employees. This will result in fluid interpersonal and interdepartmental communication.
2. Encourage collaboration and teamwork – A company must encourage its employees to share tasks between themselves, through sharing work they will communicate more and discuss things, which eventually will help to increase comfort. A company or a team leader must encourage the employees to work together and take decisions. A team leader should only come into the picture in cases of severe conflicts and misunderstandings.
3. Propagate creativity and innovation – To make an employee feel important, everyone must be involved in some work as per their choice and interest. However, one should not impose work on an employee; a leader should let an employee willingly accept challenges, which will eventually help with better productivity. If a company encourages its employees when it comes to innovation, then it would be a great thing for both the company and the employees. An innovation-driven company always has far better brand value than other companies that do not give much emphasis on innovative ideas. If the company encourages its employees to innovate then it can create a far better work culture, that eventually helps the company.
4. Be more transparent – Leaders of a company must promote more transparency and in order to do that, written communications must be promoted as it is far more reliable than verbal communication. Various important issues must be circulated among individuals through emails and all the employees must be in the loop, as due to individual communication one might feel left out.
5. Encourage risk-taking – A company must encourage its employees to take risks. It is quite natural that sometimes risks will turn out to be mistaken. However, if the leadership raises hell due to a mistake, then the employees will get nervous, and the bold decision-makers won’t stay for long. A company should always let its employees take risks, which will eventually help both the employee and the company to grow better.
6. Incorporate more open-door policies – A company must come up with various open-door policies so that an employee can explain how he/she is feeling. With the policies in place, employers can provide their subordinates a healthy work environment. A healthy work environment will make the staff more comfortable while talking to you about several issues.
7. Provide protective gear in hazardous working space – If a company works in hazardous environments, then it should make sure that the employees are using all the protective gear to keep safe, and they are protected from any potential mishap. The company should also hire someone as a safety officer who will look after the safety of all working staff. However, the safety gear should be of the right comfort and light enough so that the employees can wear it for a prolonged period.
8. Celebrate successes and arrange parties – Celebrating events like professional milestones and successes, birthdays, and cultural festivals always improve the bond between employees and employers at the workplace. A company must encourage its workforce to spruce up the office together and make all the arrangements for the event, which will make employees feel a sense of belonging in the organization.