Healthy competition is always welcome in the workplace. “Healthy” is the operative word. A cut-throat culture that puts employees through a lot of stress, pressure, and even conflict is corrosive and damaging.
While some companies may be willing to bet on this hyper-competitive workforce to drive their business success, it is rarely sustainable over a long period of time. Startup culture, in particular, often uses stakes and other contingent rewards to drive their early success (or survival).
While such high-pressure environments may yield results in the short term, they are not a sustainable model over the long term. There is a growing understanding of human psychology and a consensus that happy workforces tend to be far more productive than ones that are overstressed.
In other words, workers and teams in positive work cultures may deliver far more dramatic results than those in a hyper-competitive one. This blog attempts to explore four key reasons why this may be the case. Read on.
Table of Contents
Inclusive Work Cultures Offer Stronger Connections
Inclusivity is often a hallmark of positive work cultures. The best businesses have diverse workforces, ideally without any bias towards gender, appearance, sexual orientations, race, ethnic backgrounds, or religions.
This entails much more than meeting labor diversity guidelines or internal policies. Diverse and inclusive work culture is much better suited to forming stronger internal bonds among teams.
A strong bond among workers and teams can help keep workers motivated and driven, even under difficult circumstances. It can also help build a stronger loyalty between employers and employees.
Additionally, workforces are the best employer brand ambassadors; they can help supplement your networking efforts, in parallel with more specialized recruitment efforts, like sourcing technical talent through a local staffing agency in Pittsburgh.
Empathic Managers Can Keep Teams Motivated
Empathy and emotional intelligence are qualities that are very desirable in employees responsible for the management of others. The role of a manager should be much more than communicating workflow needs to teams or specific staffing needs to, say, a sales staffing agency.
The natural dynamic between teams and their reporting managers allows managers to play a huge role in how a worker or team perceives the workplace. By extension, managers can have a direct impact on how motivated a team or worker may feel. Emotional sensitivity and awareness can be powerful tools to help managers form deeper professional bonds.
Empathic managers can quickly hone in on problems impacting an individual that reports to them. This puts them in the ideal position to offer solutions or advice based on empathy and relatability.
Reading Suggestion: How to Create an Employee Centric Workplace Culture
Synergy Among Teams Help Accomplish Difficult Tasks
“Many hands make light work” is an adage demonstrated effectively by workplace synergy. Groups of individuals working together can tackle tasks and solve problems more efficiently than any single worker. However, synergy can rarely be forced. For optimal efficiency, workers should be able to depend on their colleagues and managers for support.
Moreover, it is not enough for workers to be motivated or on the same page. Positive work culture is based on allowing a certain degree of freedom and support to accomplish their tasks.
This often includes being able to rely on employers offering support for any needs that may arise when executing tasks or projects. Should a team require consultant input on a construction project, firms should be willing to reach out to civil engineering staffing agencies immediately.
Supportive Cultures Can Help Workers Cope with Problems
Employees may often find it difficult or inappropriate to voice certain kinds of problems to reporting managers. Workers may be afraid of being stigmatized after admitting to mental health issues like burnout or workplace anxiety, for example. Others may feel bullied, harassed, or even discriminated against in the workplace.
Toxicity in workplaces is rarely tolerated, with many talent acquisition plans specifically excluding candidates with disciplinary issues or criminal histories.
In spite of best efforts, certain elements may still slip past. This is where positive work culture is so useful. Especially one that offers workers confidential channels to communicate their concerns and see quick responses or results. This empowers them in many ways, including removing toxic workers or policies as/when discovered.
