Is Your Workplace Culture Thriving or Surviving?

Introduction: Thriving or Just Surviving?

Is your business or organization thriving or just surviving? Do you feel good about arriving each day confident that sales, growth, and production are increasing? Are your current customers leaving five-star reviews? Are you effortlessly acquiring new customers?

In this article, I will explain why fixing a toxic workplace environment can help your business or organization to stop surviving and begin thriving.

The Vision vs. Reality

You started your business or organization because you had a vision. Maybe it was to help people, or perhaps it was to help yourself. Either way, has it gone according to plan?

If your vision is not coming into focus, then the reality may be setting in. It’s not working, no matter how hard you work.

You are an expert in what you do!

You have the skills to do the work!

Unfortunately, business, people, and leadership skills are different but learnable. These skills are essential to creating a healthy workplace culture. More learning may be in store for you.

Warning Signs of a Struggling Culture

The three significant warning signs of struggling workplace culture are upset employees, upset customers, and no profit growth.

I like the saying, “Happy employees equal happy customers.” If you can take care of your employees, then your employees will take care of your customers. Upset employees can make your workplace culture toxic!

It is not typical for a high number of customers to be upset. Your operation depends on customers; they are why you can exist. Naturally, you can’t please every customer. Making “customer care” your goal can help reduce backlash. Customer backlash contributes to a hostile or toxic workplace.

Most businesses or organizations typically thrive by growth. It can be slow or fast growth, but any growth is a good sign. Your operation can have significant issues if you’re not growing or shrinking. A toxic workplace culture can be a considerable factor in no growth.

Regular employee engagement surveys may help you detect the warning signs. Please read my previous article to learn more.

The Cost of Ignoring Workplace Culture

The cost of ignoring a lousy workplace culture really is…a cost! The cost of unrealized profits!

A toxic workplace culture can rob you of future profits that you desperately need to continue to grow. Fast growth may not be your goal, but small, constant growth is essential.

A loss of profits is sad, but losing top talent is heartbreaking! You can’t even consider increased profits if you lose your best employees. Losing employees costs you again with recruitment fees and training time.

New employees might be paid less, but it takes time to improve productivity. The savings for entry-level employees are lost due to time training and gaining experience.

Awareness: The First Step to Change

In the heat of business and getting the job done, owners, founders, and managers may not notice the decline of workplace culture. Getting the next task done and expecting delegated tasks to get done fast is all you see sometimes.

As an owner, you always need to take a step back to see the condition of your organization. Implement a process or set up a third party to alert you to any issues.

Please don’t be ashamed or upset that you didn’t see issues arise until they were critical. An early warning system is essential but is forgotten quickly, or you never knew that you should have set it up in the first place.

A simple employee review system may help you. Please read my previous article to learn more.

Why Workplace Culture Declines

If you don’t water a flower, give it fertilizer, put it in the sunlight, and prune off the dead leaves, it will not be happy. It will start wilting, lose its petals, and die. You may not see the physical signs right away, and the flower may even seem like it’s doing well as it grows longer roots to find water or stretch out new stems to find sunlight.

So, to keep your flowers alive, put a reminder in your calendar to water the plants and rotate the pots weekly. Yearly or when recommended, you have a reminder to add some fertilizer.

This is the same situation you may face with your organization. You must nurture your people.

What Great Leaders Do Differently

  • Great leaders know that the people in an organization are more important than the work done.
  • Great leaders are accessible and always looking for feedback.
  • Great leaders nurture the people who do the work.
  • Great leaders have systems and third-party advisors giving alternative and creative options.
  • Great leaders are constantly learning and helping employees learn.
  • Great leaders read articles like this and seek more support if needed.

Building a Thriving Workplace

Building a thriving workplace could take months or years, maybe even never, if you don’t take it seriously.

Investigate what is wrong and design a plan that you can follow. Update this plan every 3-6 months until you have reached your desired changes.

Then, follow-ups and periodic investigations are conducted to get more feedback and to see if you can pre-empt any issues.

The Path Forward

Find a third-party expert like an HR consultant to support you in your mission to start thriving.

After you’ve solved your toxic workplace issues, you can look to other experts, such as a sales consultant. Without solving internal problems, trying to increase sales will fail because you’ll not be ready for the increase in work.

Stay Tuned: Next Steps for Great Leaders

The first step in becoming a great leader is realizing you’re not the devil. For more on this topic, see my next article. (Coming Soon!)

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