Building a Dream Team: 10 Ways to Cultivate a Positive Startup Culture
A positive startup culture is the key to successful growth in business. The values that startup culture itself expresses attract top talents, motivate employees, change the game, and take risks that traditional companies would never do.
Think of startup culture as adventurers charting out unknown lands to create revolutionary ideas and products while redefining classic business models.
Startup work culture can be described in key phrases such as the agile method, collaborative, and flat hierarchy. It’s a type of work culture that values creativity, innovation, transparency, and open communication between all employees.
The culture itself is often adopted by companies with limited resources and a high drive towards problem-solving and flexibility. However, to build startup culture in the best light for your company, you need to learn a few methods that can envelop the mindset not just of your team leaders, but of your employees as well.
The 10 Ways to Building a Positive Startup Culture
It is natural to want to continue learning about the best startup culture can offer after hearing the benefits and mindset it can give. Listed below are 10 startup culture tips that can refine your company’s culture and excel in the values business owners have placed their faith in.
Define Core Values and Make Them Real
A positive startup culture starts with planting the core values as soon as possible. Ideally, you begin to define your company’s stance and values before even building a startup team. It doesn’t matter if your company starts with two employees or less. The core values you decide will be the foundation of your company’s culture.
Does your startup highly value honesty? Accountability? Diversity? Or do you wish to enrich innovation instead?
Values are what your company deems fit to enrich, and expand, and are essential to the company’s identity. Without any core values implemented, your company will likely lose its way while your employees’ conflicting priorities mash up together.
Mashed-up values will make your company’s identity messy. There won’t be a clear understanding of what your company stands for and their attitudes or performance would vary. Meanwhile, a refined set of core values implemented regularly to the employees promotes the startup as an organised and focused team that delivers their projects in their own way.
Hire for Culture Fit
To maintain the momentum of a positive startup culture it’s important to consider the eligibility of new hires. After learning, adopting, and implementing the core values you have decided on, it’s best to continue forward by hiring employees who share the same goals and values as your company.
Hiring employees who value the same things your company does makes it easier for a seamless transition. Not only do they already have the attitude your company prefers, but they’re also likely to promote the work culture by example.
Adaptable, agile, independent, and collaborative are just some of the many examples of values that successful startups have. Once all employees envelope and adjust towards the same mindset and values you have promoted, the goals become clearer and more attainable through the team’s like-minded efforts.
Foster Open Communication
Transparency and feedback are tools to create a positive startup culture. While you may have all your core values intact with your team, being unavailable for open communication may create a stagnant response and lose the entire meaning of startup culture’s innovation and collaboration.
To prevent this from happening, startup companies should encourage open communication between employees and employers alike. Using an exclusive communication channel and video messaging services can diminish any potential errors and misunderstandings due to a lack of notification.
Prepare to use project management tools and discuss openly about each other’s strengths and weaknesses. By doing so with an open mind, the company and its employees can improve their setbacks to grow further into business success and expansion.
Promote Work-Life Balance
Another important method is the promotion of work-life balance in a positive startup culture. To prevent burnout, quiet quitting, and other work-related negative mindsets, founders and managers must prioritise the balance of work and life.
This means that once the clock ends their shift, employees must return to their social life and not continue working. It also means that over time, working during special leaves, and other behaviours that are considered “workaholic” should be strongly avoided.
There’s a good reason for it too. Burnout comes from managers and other employees giving out and working on too many loads and tasks at once. Being a workaholic may be the gateway to employee burnout.
Burnouts can lead to resentment towards the company, excessive stress, type 2 diabetes, respiratory issues, high blood pressure, and even heart diseases. Employees suffering from burnout will likely be more irritable, depressed, anxious, and are more vulnerable to substance abuse.
To avoid burnout, successfully establish boundaries for your employees to be encouraged to sleep, play, or socialise with their relationships. It’s also a good idea to reach out and connect with your employees to build their trust and learn more about their needs.
Avoid messaging them for non-emergencies at work once their shifts are over. Encourage them not to reply during such instances as well. By doing so, you allow them to create their line between work and play.
Invest in Employee Growth
Investing in your employees is the best step in enhancing a positive startup culture. As your employee, being given extensive knowledge before their original hiring date means upgrading your resource’s knowledge. Meanwhile, employees receive specialised skill sets that can be beneficial to ease their workload if you give them opportunities to learn and develop.
Considering that most startups begin as a flat hierarchy, it’s important to boost the employees in your roster and give them a higher advantage in their specific careers. This will help in boosting your company’s efficiency and problem-solving faster than a traditional employee.
Consider signing them up for seminars, workshops, and brown bag sessions that develop their specific fields. Encourage them to venture out and ask questions to their more experienced managers or you, yourself.
Startup is all about collaboration and passion. Should an employee be encouraged to broaden their horizons regarding their knowledge, it’s important to follow through and support them in this venture.
Celebrate Successes and Recognise Achievements
Celebrating successes, recognising achievements, and appreciating the efforts of individuals or teams within your company generates a positive startup culture.
Acknowledging the trials they overcame to deliver an efficient product or service goes a long way in terms of motivation. Being motivated alone can increase drive and productivity among the employees.
You can also give them small tokens and prizes for all kinds of achievements. Yes. This also includes minimal successes as well. Having a heartwarming gift after reaching achievements entices employees. It won’t matter what prize it may be, from ordering pizza for the team, saying thank yous or other more larger prizes.
As long as it’s a healthy work culture, these prizes often increase employee engagement, promote innovation, encourage open communication, and reduce the chances of burnout.
Encourage Collaboration and Teamwork
Encouraging collaboration and teamwork is a necessary key to a positive startup culture. Not only does it bring about a sense of unity between employees, but it also improves communication and productivity.
While collaboration and teamwork is a great thing to achieve, it’s also difficult to maintain and establish. Consider hosting team-building activities and events to build a strong sense of community within your company.
The aftereffects of successful team building could increase productivity, innovation, and quick turnaround time. It also makes the work environment less tense for the employees, making it less likely for burnout.\
Create a Fun and Flexible Work Environment
It’s also good to note that a positive startup culture will naturally encourage a fun and flexible work environment. Companies that aren’t strict with demands or rules, allow fun-filled activities, and have a positive mindset in their environment have higher engagement with employees.
Employee engagement in startups is necessary to increase the consistent growth of a business and expansion of unique projects. If the work environment is straining, inflexible, and always serious, it could instead lead to employee burnout and resentment.
Prevent any negative mindsets by encouraging employees to have fun while working. While it may look like the company encourages a relaxed environment, the side effects should be that the employees are productive, less tense, and more open to asking questions.
Embrace Transparency and Feedback
Speaking of being open to asking questions, positive startup cultures also embrace transparency and feedback from employees and customers. Choosing to improve from the feedback and understanding their concerns is one of the ways to learn where your company lacks from an outsider’s perspective.
Accept and receive feedback on employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and overall product evaluation. The continuous feedback you receive is a stepping stone to elevate your ideas, your company culture, and your employees while maximising their potential.
Lead by Example
All the other methods listed above to create positive startup cultures are perfect. However, leadership sets the cultural tone of company culture in the first place. It’s important to lead by example amongst your employees.
Keep yourself in check and consistently implement work-life balance while following the rules you established for your employees as well. By doing so, your employees will follow you as an example of a perfect employer
Founders are also someone to follow by those with managerial positions. By following the leadership methods that you established yourself and implementing them on your managerial teams, they will likely follow your style of teaching to your newer employees.
Benefits of a Positive Startup Culture
There are plenty of benefits of a positive work culture established in a company. Not only does it increase productivity and employee retention rate, but it also helps gain a sense of unity between employees.
Collaboration becomes easier with effective startup teams that gain a positive mindset from the methods you have used for work. Effective team building will create more ways for co-workers to discuss possible methods to improve work methods or create new products and services.
All of these reflect on the products or services sold to customers. The attitude of employees who interact with the clients also will gain positive thinking, increasing customer satisfaction, sales, and growth.
Conclusion
Learning how to build a positive startup culture is one thing, implementing is the true challenge founders will have to face. While the benefits of a work culture in its full potential affect the company’s overall long-term growth, it will take determination and laser-like focus to continuously implement these methods.
Leading by example, celebrating successes, and encouraging collaboration will help greatly in influencing employees to respond in a habitual manner that caters to the values of your business. However, failure to successfully adopt a positive startup culture leads to drastic and irreversible results.
Prevention methods such as the ones listed above are a good way to start cultivating your startup’s culture. However, if you truly wish to develop a dream team without any sudden setbacks, contact Flexilabs today! We offer a range of services to