Positive workplace culture helps to improve teamwork, productivity, efficiency and the retention of employees. Working in a negative environment can make you miserable, and depressed. Work becomes a chore and a daunting task. When the culture is more positive, you are more likely to enjoy completing objectives for work. Spending your Mondays through Fridays at work, a positive attitude is key to getting through the week.

What is positive workplace culture?

Positive workplace culture is a work culture that has a positive environment. It relies on people encouraging others to improve and strive to do their best. A culture where everyone helps build each other up. 

How to develop a positive workplace culture?

Developing a positive workplace culture takes time and effort from employees big and small. One of the first steps should be to show gratitude towards the work your employees or coworkers are doing. This might mean saying thank you for their contributions to a project, or telling them when you like an idea. Showing that someone cares for what they are doing and that they appreciate it, will allow them to become more motivated. We should treat our employees and coworkers how we want to be treated. If you give positive feedback, you yourself will start to receive more positive feedback.

Another important concept is communication. Workplaces need to have open, clear communication, because feeling confused about what your boss wants from you, but being unable to reach out, feels horrible. It is so important to have good communication, it prevents conflict and wasted effort. If you were asked to do a two hour task, but then you find out that they wanted you to do it differently, you have to restart and you lost two hours of productivity. This will also make it harder to be motivated to do work, if some of your work was deemed non useful.  Communication is needed for feedback and expectation to be met.

Work should be a place to grow. There should be learning and training to allow you to develop your skills. This way employees never feel that they can’t improve or better themselves. 

Creating a positive workplace culture is more important than it may first appear. It is good for your mental health and for your company. It can make your company a place people actually want to be. You will find your employees have a higher retention rate, higher productivity and your company will have more good rumors. You can check out the blog post by PII about how to create the best workplace culture for even more workplace ideas. 

Crucial Components for a Healthy Workplace Culture:

1. Open and Clear Communication

   This is what the basis of all work related relationships will be relying on. Having open and clear communication, encourages questions and feedback, which in turn improves productivity and quality. 

2. Learning and Training Opportunities

   These opportunities will allow employees to not feel confined to their job title and to always expand their skill set.

3. Gratitude and Recognition 

   This helps to provide trust and confidence from your employees.

4. Have Inclusion of Ideas

   Inclusion makes employees feel as if they are part of the team and the company as a whole. 

Anyone can help by just starting the workplace conversation about improving the culture. Starting to try to do some of the ideas listed in how to develop a positive workplace culture is also a great idea. Once you start doing something and the results start showing up, then others will follow in your footsteps. 

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