Your business growth is linked with your Organizational culture

Culture is defined by a set of beliefs, values, attitudes and lifestyle that is specific to a group of people, originating and living in a specific region. Needless to say, culture is powerful enough to mold the habits, thinking patterns and objectives of these people. People coming from two different cultures are likely to conceive a problem in a different manner; they’ll go after solving this problem in their own way and the level of dedication will also be different. Bottom line, culture can cast positive or negative effects on the overall personalities and consequently the fate of the nations.

If the culture can make or break a nation (along with many other factors), there’s every chance that the organizational culture is going to play an equally important role in the overall success or failure of a company.

What is organizational culture?
Similar to the national culture, organizational culture is a set of values, objectives and attitudes that exists and prevails within an organization. If you have been a part of different organizations in any capacity, you’ll most probably be aware of the variance in organizational cultures. Whenever you move to a new organization, you have to make changes in your personality and attitudes according to their culture or you can try to change the culture itself if you are sitting at some managerial positions (it’s going to be tough though). However, once the culture incorporates the positive values, vision and directions, you can be sure that the company is heading into the right direction.

How does it affect the business?
In many ways, for example culture will form the character of your company (and the character of your employees), it develops an ownership among the staff, and it ties them in a bond and improves collaboration. A positive and strong culture sends out strong messages to your clients, as well as your competitors. Similarly strong organizational culture helps in shaping up the workforce, especially if it is coming from diverse backgrounds.

Laying foundation of a strong Organizational culture:
Once established, Organizational culture is very hard to change, this is something you need to work on right from the start. Characteristics of Organizational culture travel from the top management to lower staff, the dedication and the attitude you want to see in your workers should be noticeable in you, as a manager. Also, you should endorse the culture in company meetings, workshops or any other event that take place.

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Wholesale Manufacturers
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Job Satisfaction - How satisfied are your employees?

How satisfied are your employees with their jobs and the company? You should be asking this question to yourself, quite often. For the reason, that a worker who is not satisfied with his job would not only be looking for a new job, he/she will also be uninterested in performing at their full potential. What’s more? They’ll transfer this negativity into their fellow workers and you will be left with a workforce where majority of the workers is discontent with their jobs. You can well imagine the consequences.

On the other hand, an employee who is satisfied with his/her job will continuously strive to work hard so that he/she can retain the job. Job satisfaction is a product of many elements, some of the important ones are remuneration package, workforce environment, management style and the nature of the duties assigned.

Management Style:
The relationship between the manager and subordinates is a very critical one, if the managers or supervisors are disrespectful or unconcerned about their subordinate’s emotions; the job satisfaction level is always going to be low, no matter what the other instrumental factors are. Nobody likes discriminatory treatment, insulting remarks or overly authoritative behavior. Employees should feel at ease in the workplace, therefore the supervision should not unnecessarily violate the comfort level.

Workforce Environment and health issues:
Bad working conditions includes (but of course are not limited to) bad lighting, insufficient ventilation, hot temperatures or any other kind of health hazards. If the workers’ health is at risk, they can be anything but satisfied. These concerns should be solved on first priority basis without waiting for someone coming up with complains. In addition to the physical safety, working environment should also be able to provide mental peace. Issues like overly aggressive supervisors, bullish co-workers or impractical work targets can ruin the peace of mind.

A good salary package can nullify various minor issues:
Probably the most influential factor in job satisfaction is the remuneration one gets for his job, a reasonable pay will compensate for many hitches, for example work overload, overtime or even a stressful job. Job satisfaction is directly related to remuneration packages and dissatisfaction mostly come up when a worker feels that he is not being appropriately compensated for the work he is doing for the company.

Apart from these factors, there are some other weighty elements as well, for example job security, overall economic conditions, growth opportunities or work/life balance. If you are experiencing high turnover rate, workers taking excessive leaves or low productivity, then you must look into these factors.

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Coping with the workforce diversity for manager

Workforce diversity is often considered a characteristic of large corporations, with considerably large pool of employees; however workforce diversity is not limited to just large companies. If we go by the definition, any business having two or more than two employees coming from different age groups, ethnic backgrounds, religious sectors, race or gender, etc is basically having a diverse workforce. Sometimes the differences are trivial and hard to notice, sometimes quite flagrant.

Workforce diversity is not something to be wary of, even if it requires a little bit more planning and thinking at manager's end, because it brings so many different perspectives and thought patterns to the organization, hence a diverse workforce is more of a plus than minus for businesses. A diverse workforce results in a more flexible and innovative business. That is why, there's no need to panic, if you find yourself managing a multitalented workforce. Wasting your time in planning to avoid people coming from difference age groups, gender or religious backgrounds is not only a discriminatory practice, but also a bad management decision. By doing this, you are closing your doors to a more versatile workforce, which is more capable of dealing with challenges.

Do's:

First of all, you need to accept diversity and allow your employees to carry and develop their own unique personalities (as long as it doesn't clash with office discipline and business objectives). It comes handy during the process of decision making and business meetings, where some sort of brain storming is needed. A group that consists of managers or attendees with similar ages, genders or experiences is more likely to miss out some noteworthy aspects, which a more diverse group can easily point out. As a manager, you must make use of the diversity when making some important decisions like finalizing a project, making appraisal plans or launching a new business.

Dont's:

Never go over the top with your efforts to eradicate individuality from the work place, with the intention of developing a more standardized workforce. By doing this, you may end up killing the creativity of your staff, a business having no originality or inventiveness can never reach its true potential. Take the example of this world, despite of so many disasters and challenges; this world continues to exist so far because of its diversity. To manage a diverse workforce efficiently, a manager should be having excellent communication skills and an understanding of human behaviors.

An insight into the Path Goal Theory for leading your workforce

In the past ten years or so, we have seen an abundance of new management theories/models being introduced. However, there’s no management theory that’s worth calling a perfect one, also it is practically impossible for all managers to try and apply each of them. Does that mean, a manager should pay no attention to these theories? Well, the answer is in negative, for most of these models are laid down by successful managers or erudite scholars. Therefore, you must go through all of them once in a while, for the sake of learning one thing or two, even if you are not looking to adapt.

One of these management theories is referred to as the “Path-Goal theory of leadership” that has been jotted down by Robert House. In simple words, the theory describes the role of managers in setting goals and then laying down a roadmap to reach there, more importantly it discusses four different types of approaches that a manager could use according to different circumstances. The theory is a good reminder of the fact that management is much more than hiring and firing employees, or maintaining discipline in the office. The job doesn’t end on stating the desired results and pointing towards the resources; it actually starts from that point and remains a manager's duty to support, motivate and guide his/her workers all the way through. 

Following are the four different styles of management (or leadership, for that matter) described in the theory. Remember, you don’t need to choose and then stick with only one of them; an efficient manager should be able to adapt any of the following styles, according to specific situations or workforce.

Supportive approach:

A manager is ought to be supportive to his/her subordinates, right? Still, managers like to carry that “bossy aura” around them, most of the times. As a result, subordinates feel reluctant to speak to their managers. Now, managers are supposed to be the most experienced and well-versed person in the workforce, how efficient do you think will be the workforce, where the most qualified person is reduced to sit in his/her office and look into various reports once in a while?

Directive Approach:

This is the standard approach now days; managers set the targets, assign tasks and resources and provide the subordinates with guidelines. This approach is not bad, given that the workers are qualified and experienced enough.

Achievement Oriented Approach:

This approach is recommended in challenging projects (for example when you need to motivate your sales staff to introduce a new product in the market). At such instances, you need to raise the bar, and then push them to rise above by offering sufficient rewards and appraisals.

Participative Approach:

In this style of management, the manager encourages the participation of each and every member in the team, especially when implementing a change or making some important decision regarding business.