In the modern workspace that is continuously evolving, organizations are forced to recognize the power of creating a people-centric culture. Regardless of the base focus that we all have on profits and performance metrics, there’s a considerable shift towards putting individuals in focus within an organization.
The emphasis a people-centric culture makes is not only on the achievements themselves but on how they are achieved, making sure to highlight the human effort put into it. Let us dive deeper into the details of a people-centric culture, and explore the benefits, challenges, and steps to create it.
An employee-centric culture has several core components to take into account if you wish to successfully create one yourself:
Empathy and Respect: Creating a work environment that embodies empathy and respect will be the pillar of a people-centric workspace. This way, you acknowledge the diverse perspectives of your employees.
Healthy Communication: Encouraging transparency will cultivate an environment of feeling heard and valued by everyone in your organization.
Employee Well-being: Prioritizing support for your employees concerning mental and physical health is essential to being a people-centric workspace.
Collaboration and Teamwork: Fostering a space that encourages collaboration and teamwork will promote cross-functional collaboration.
Flexibility: Flexible work hours and arrangements will show you understand the human conditions and will provide your employees the support they need.
Recognition: Recognizing that the contributions of your employees should be acknowledged and appreciated is especially important if you wish to be a people-centric organization.
Leadership: Ensuring that the leaders in your organization embody the people-centric culture will help set the bar within your workspace.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion will help create an environment where your employees will feel included valued, and supported equally.
Evaluate your current workspace and make sure to take benchmark data during this process. You can use surveys, interviews, and assessments to do so to have a better understanding of your employees’ current experience and hence what needs to be improved.
Conduct regular pulse surveys with your team.
There is an incredible pulse survey tool you can use to conduct regular surveys and assess the organizational culture in your company.
If your organization uses Microsoft Teams on a regular basis, you might want to give Teamflect a try. It is the best survey tool in the Microsoft Teams ecosystem and it lets you send out and analyze surveys without ever having to leave Microsoft Teams!
In accordance with your findings, define core values that prioritize your people. Make sure to align these values with your company’s vision. Consider involving your employees in this process to help build ownership and alignment on their end as well.
While these can change depending on your organization’s culture and a million other things, here is a list of some rather common and helpful core values and competencies to have in your team:
Integrity: Commit to honesty and transparency within your organization.
Diversity and Inclusion: Celebrate diversity in all regards in your workspace, to provide an equal environment for all perspectives to coexist.
Innovation: Embrace creativity and adaptability to ensure the most forward-thinking outcomes in your creations.
Problem Solving: Analyze situations and identify solutions with your team.
Resilience: Be prepared to bounce back from tough spots and maintain your proactivity.
Leadership: Inspire and guide your team, make sound decisions, and cultivate a positive workspace.
You can use Teamflect to determine your core competencies! Teamflect offers default competencies that you can take inspiration from and if you have other options in mind already, you can always customize and make it your own!
Ensuring commitment from your leaders will allow you to lead by example which is an important step into making sure that these values are imbedded to your workplace culture.
Be clear in your expectations and values when doing so and make sure to provide proper training. By keeping communication open and leading them by example yourself, you can ensure the necessary commitment from the leaders within your organization.
Foster channels for open communication so that everyone can regularly share information among themselves regarding company goals, strategies, and changes. This step allows you to encourage feedback and foster transparent dialogue.
By granting employees autonomy, you can empower them within your decision-making processes where feasible. You can also help empower them by providing support with wellness programs that support your employees beyond just work, but also in terms of physical and mental health.
Invest in and encourage feedback and individual development opportunities. Make sure to recognize, appreciate, and reward your employees for their achievements. Consider feedback, rewards, and recognition a healthy circular function that assists you in your business progress.
If you want to start a 360-degree feedback cycle inside Microsoft Teams, you can use feedback software such as Teamflect to send your feedback requests organization-wide with ease. You can include managers, direct reports, peers, and external parties in the feedback process and get a complete picture.
Creating a diverse and equal culture will be imperative in having a people-centric work environment. You will not be able to foster a people-focused culture without including fairness and diversity in your team-building strategies.
Keep track of how your culture develops over time with regard to your benchmark when you first started. By keeping track and collecting data on your process, you allow for clarity in identifying improvement points and hold your organization accountable for its goals.
Don’t forget, people-centric culture is an ever-evolving process that requires dedication and consistency in your efforts. Your commitment to adapt accordingly as you grow will be imperative as you adjust to your employees’ needs.
There are many positive outcomes to creating a people-centric work environment. Here are five benefits that you’ll receive in return for your efforts:
As with most things in life, building people-centric workplaces also comes with challenges of its own. Here are five things to watch out for if you’re working on building your own employee-centric organization:
Although navigating these processes may be challenging, the long-term effects of having a people-centric culture in your organization will be especially rewarding, especially once you find your rhythm with it.
Similar to the challenges you might face, when you’re navigating your journey to building a people-centric entity, you may experience negative outcomes if you fall for these mistakes:
If you successfully avoid these mistakes, you will have a strong start in your journey to creating a people-focused organization.
What better way is there to figure out how you can approach and build your own people-centric approach than to look for real-life examples?
See what these five companies are doing to understand what a people-centric culture can look like in the real world:
These companies are just a few examples of what a people-centric culture at work can look like. You too can help cultivate such a space by following these steps and using Teamflect to help organize yourself, the best performance management software for Microsoft Teams!
The core components of a people-centric culture are empathy and respect, healthy communication, employee well-being, collaboration and teamwork, flexibility, recognition, leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The benefits are increased employee engagement, enhanced retention and loyalty, improved performance, better well-being and satisfaction, and company reputation.
The main challenges are resistance to change, inconsistent leadership, time and resource constraints, measuring impact, and maintaining consistency.
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