Starting a small business is a fantastic idea for anyone who wants to cater to something that they feel is not being met in their market. Creating that product or service can be a rewarding undertaking. Being your own boss and setting your own hours is something that many people want to achieve. But in order to get this, then you might not realise that your team can make the difference between being the next Apple and going under. So, we are going to discuss some tips you might want to consider when building a great small business work culture.  

Developing a Company Philosophy

When starting a business, you want to make sure that you start off on the right foot with what your identity is as an organization. You need to have your rfp’s and other policies for your business in place. The brand you create for yourself and the values you hold will say volumes about your service/product. The most successful business will create iconic messaging that lines up with their brand identity. Let us look at Nike for instance. Their slogan concisely expresses everything they can stand for. Just do it. Three simple words that capture the company’s philosophy.

If you want your business to succeed, the principles you build your business on will define it going forward. Prospective employees will better understand what your organization stands for if you build your company philosophy into all your marketing materials. Having clear communication about what you stand for can set the right precedent for customers and staff alike. This unified ideology you bring your employees under can create a culture and work environment that they will fall in love with.

With this newly developed devotion, anchored by the shared values the company has with its employees. You will see your workers become self-motivated. Your employees will internalise the companies values as their own. So, they will go the extra mile to uphold the businesses values. When this kind of cohesion with employees and company philosophy happens, employees become more invested in the success of the business.

Understanding Your Employee’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Understanding your employees and how they work can save you so much time, effort and money. If you can create a working environment that benefits your employees, as much as it benefits your cashflow then you will have the perfect recipe for a successful business. Sitting down with all your employees and asking them how work environments can be improved can be a good strategy to improving your work culture. 

By conducting a thorough workplace evaluation of employees, you can understand what their goals are for the company and their own personal goals. This can help you connect to your employees and demonstrate to them that you are invested in their development. This can inspire a team member to push themselves. Which will benefit the company and the individual’s professional goals.

Asking your team manager – if you have one – for a second opinion about the perceived strengths and weaknesses of staff could help you to build a picture of how you will move forward with different employees. This could be based on their current work performance. An employee could be performing poorly in their current position but might have some untapped potential in another area. 

Demonstrating this kind of flexibility will be cheaper for your organization because you do not have to pay recruitment fees to rehire. In addition, this provides your employees with a sense of job stability, which will allow employees to focus more on their work and less on the worries of redundancy. This can reinforce the culture you are developing and inspire your team to be more efficient.

Having a Clear Vision with External Partners

As a small business you might have just had your first break with a multi-year. Understanding the vision on this project and how you can use your team’s strengths to complete this large-scale project in a consistent fashion should be at the forefront of your mind. 

Keeping your team adaptable and motivated can be challenging when working with so many pieces. Some business leaders have found success by increasing the transparency between teams from different organisations, all working on the same project. This transparency can lead to a lot of growth for your team because they can learn external operations. And you can provide value to the teams you are working with. These new perspectives could help you build an award-winning workplace with a company vision that attracts some of the best talent in the world.

When tackling this large project, you will have to consider that you might be part of a larger group of teams that are working on different parts of this huge project. To keep projects running smoothly professionals turn to OKR software for task management and responsibility distribution. If you would like more information on OKRs this post does a good job of explaining what OKRs are. Using the right technology can help your business execute your vision internally or with other organizations

To conclude, when planning out your ideal work culture, remember to listen to those in your team. Doing so will lead to a team that can put their faith in you as their figurehead. And by extension grow an efficient work culture organically. Flexibility is a must in this digital age but with an OKR we can keep on track for those long-term goals.