Today, almost all successful organizations realize the importance of having a collaborative and open work culture that fosters creativity and clear communication channels. Work cultures need to be dynamic and accommodating, and all world business leaders realize this. It helps bring out the best in every employee and fosters creativity in the workplace.
Google, for example, has a highly open work culture and accommodates all kinds of creative individuals, and boasts of its success based on having an innovative workspace. A positive and open culture brings in diverse and bright ideas, a long-term perspective of things, a creative spirit, and determination. Employees are naturally more motivated in an environment that offers them greater freedom of thought and expression.
Business Moguls understand these core principles because they utilize their thought and freedom of expression to get where they are. They do innovate and are created personally and have the insight to understand that creative teams together can accomplish much more than a single talented individual.
Features of an Open Work Culture
An open work culture is something that most startups today adopt. A few years ago, this was not the case when the office formats were intensely hierarchal, and communications channels were separate and with many barriers. Many successful startups in the digital sector popularized the open work culture that based their success on such progressive office environments. Over time, it became evident that innovation is a necessity for success today and that it only happens in the right environment.
Some of the various features of open work culture are mentioned below.
- Horizontal Hierarchy- Dropping the walls of old-school structures of management have led to more collaborative efforts and better coordination among various teams. This has also led to an increase in the number of creative inputs from each employee. There is no pressure from a manager steadily breathing down, and the workforce can use the freedom in productive and creative endeavors. However, such horizontal hierarchal structures require clear and open channels of communication for accurate and timely reporting and update of progress.
- Flexibility- An office that comes with flexible working hours, open culture and room for personal space will see more productive employees. Such flexibility in structure and regulations motivates employees to work harder for the project at hand. Employees feel reassured that the organization and business leaders care about their efforts which boosts their morale.
- Autonomy- Autonomy can be hard to manage. While every team needs management, autonomy has to be handled carefully. Employees feel powerful enough to make significant changes and have the necessary support and encouragement to come up with new ideas. At the same time, the efforts need to go in a proper and planned direction. With flat organization structures, the power is equally divided among employees and leads to better cooperation and friendly work culture at the office. This distribution of autonomy is crucial to enterprising and hard-working employees.
- Open communication- This is one of the most important features of work culture in any kind of organization. While there were numerous levels of communication and conversation in the old hierarchal structures, today’s organizations have open silos of communication where all ideas and official conversation happens on common platforms, while such platforms can be divided into easily manageable groups, the communication happens through open channels only, and everyone is equally aware. This also allows employees to contribute to problems of other departments and take various kinds of inspirations and tips for the problems at hand. Open communication if managed effectively is a great strength that leads to constant innovation and efforts.
Work-life balance is one of the most vital but often neglected aspects of work culture. The work-life balance refers to an employee’s ability to remain physically healthy and mentally fit, and refreshed to give in their 100% every day at work. It is what keeps employees and, in turn, teams going.
Poor work-life balance has dual impacts. It first disrupts employees’ personal lives, and then it decreases their productivity and motivation to work day after day. Hence ensuring a proper work-life balance is crucial in today’s work cultures.
Some of the significant problems associated with poor work-life balance include absenteeism, stress and health problems, mental health complications, disruptive family life, and even job loss. Stress at the workplace arises when the employee is unable to cope with the expectations and demands of the job or when the working environment is not healthy.
A toxic work environment puts unmanageable pressure on its employees and has needlessly harsh restrictions at the workplace. Offices are environments where employees spend one of the most significant portions of their lifetimes and should be conducive and healthy in every possible way.
Hence successful business leaders and business giants take every step to ensure that proper work culture is established.