The Right Choice

The concept behind a startup heavily depends upon the customer requirements and possible market transformations. The chances of succeeding with the best approaches are bright. And it also provides you with the benefits as your company takes the best efforts to bring out your best. Here are some of the reasons why you should work in a startup:

Friendly Work Culture

Startups heavily differ in terms of work culture and employee lifestyle when compared to other typical corporate environments. You get to make the best out of your free time; social gatherings, a lot of fun activities to do, and there are various ways startups keep their employees engaged. It allows you to work in a culture that is real and dynamic at the same time. The credit for achieving success in a task never gets snatched away from you. Because your small team strength helps you get identified easily, and you get credits in your sack.

Moreover, this fun collaboration with your co-workers develops relations with them and makes your regular work life fun and enjoyable. They ensure their employees stay fresh and efficient throughout and become more productive than ever. You can never go wrong with music, good food, and a friendly environment. Employees love to participate in such activities. Hence, the first benefit you earn is co-workers’ support.

More Than Work

If you are an introvert, this might come as a blast for you. But with time, you get habituated to this routine and start enjoying. You learn to make and keep relations with not only co-workers but with person with other departments. This is one of the crucial skills for an entrepreneur. There are startups which give their employees a friendly work environment by arranging monthly movie nights, holiday rewards, gym, and swimming pool, and many more. The point is to keep engaging their employees in activities to lead a healthy and happy life.

Shaping Up Your Career

The work culture of a company is an important aspect that affects your career. A friendly work culture lets you learn many skills from other co-workers working with you. This positive, friendly work environment helps you find what you are best at and shape your career in the best way possible. The skills you learn from your work makes all the difference.

Sharing Equity

Sharing ownership or equity/stock in the business can be a key factor in recruiting and retaining key team players. Many start-ups and small businesses use it to retain employees and make them stay for longer. When senior team members see that their shares are growing as the company expands, they feel a sense of contentment and have a greater attachment for the company too. If done successfully, this will encourage staff recruitment and retention significantly. Stock options are typically issued by companies to encourage loyalty in the company. It is mostly done to reward hard-working employees who stick with the company over time. The longer employees stay, the more of their stock options they vest. Equity compensation is non-cash pay that is offered to employees and it may include options, restricted stock, and/ or performance shares. When employees are given away equity, the employer is not just incentivizing them but is giving them real power and leverage. This is something that employees appreciate and aspire for. Having equity, in short, also means an employee is directly invested in the company’s future. That can make a huge difference in how they perceive their work.

Allow Individuality to Prosper

One of the ways smaller companies differentiate themselves is by allowing individuals to craft their own jobs. This is also the reason why young employees join small businesses or start-ups. It provides them an opportunity to be their own boss and carve their own path. Obviously, primary responsibilities need to be determined by the organization, but rest should be left to the employees and they should be allowed to finish the job at hand the way they want to.

The key is to let their individuality come out and not let them rot like they would in a stereotypical 9-5 job. Allowing a person to tweak their role to use their talents and creativity increases employee engagement and productivity.

Work from home pitfalls for businesses

It’s not all that rosy when it comes to work from home. While there are considerable advantages of working from home, there are also some disadvantages that cannot be ignored.

Lack of community

Man (and woman) is a social animal, we all know. The COVID-19 pandemic made us realise the importance of socialising, going out for a movie or a drink or two. All that will be missed if companies decide to move permanently to work from home. It depends on different personalities what they prefer. While some employees would embrace the idea of working in solitude, others may find it difficult to give up socialisation and face-to-face interactions. There is a huge chunk of people who feel that nothing is more productive than sitting together and brainstorming ideas. Furthermore, working remotely can make one feel a sense of isolation too. Some remote workplaces offer regular team events to encourage socialisation

Absence of monitoring

For some employers, monitoring employees while working independently can be a tough job. It no longer gives them power to monitor their employees and the onus lies on the employees to keep a check on their performance at work themselves. In an ideal world, we would expect a mole to call themselves out but we live far from an ideal world. Self-regulation is not easy and this might be a tough call for employers whether to leave everything on the discretion of the employees who can take endless breaks and spend less time on work.

Feeling unmotivated

While working from home is good in some respects, it tends to make people less motivated to get up in the morning mostly due to next to no commute and no schedules to stick to. Working at an office with fellow employees, who have a common goal and purpose, can be a great source of external motivation in such a scenario. Working from home, however, lacks that kind of environment. If employees feel demotivated, they can face lack of productivity in some cases. Employers have to take care that virtually, all these issues can be addressed.

Lack of tools

Employers might have a hard time arranging for a proper work from home arrangement for their employees. Practical problems like internet connectivity issues may arise that may affect workflow. Even for employees, setting up their home office space with a high-end laptop/desktop, a high-speed internet connection, and other equipment, like printers/fax machines, etc. can be pretty taxing. Around 33% of the people who work from home don’t have the necessary access to office equipment which adds to their distress while working from home.

Distractions

While office colleagues won’t be there to distract you when you’re working from home, there are million other distractions at home. Employees have often reported watching TV and childcare act as a big distraction while working from home. Never-ending household chores too take up a lot of mental space leaving little or no energy to focus on work completely. Spending time with family, too, makes it difficult to concentrate and be interested in work for long. One of the major disadvantages of working from home is loss in productivity as people tend to get distracted by comforts that they get at home. These include things like mid-day naps or playing virtual games.

Burnout

There is generally no in and out timing for remote working. This can act as a big deterrent in time management and cause burnout. While it lets employees structure their days according to their convenience, but this can turn into a huge disadvantage for some employees. You can avoid this by clearly defining a schedule and allocating specific time for work tasks and personal tasks. More often than not, work tends to flow into home-life and that line differentiating it from work-life keeps blurring. This may lead to more stress in the long run. Whereas, working in an office certainly helps to draw the line between professional and private life.

Lack of communication

Working fact to face will obviously lead to better communication between employer and employees. During the times which require big decisions to be made, it is difficult to do it over a Zoom call. There are times when everybody in a big room together hashing out things works so much better.

Company Culture Is Important, No Debate on It

Corporate culture has always been there in every company, whether knowingly or unknowingly, whether be good or bad, like any culture at any level in the society but was not consciously looked at and given its due importance until recently. The times have changed and all those stakeholders who deal with a company accord high weightage to it. It is not any more the buzz words inserted in mission and vision statements which many founders don’t even remember after some time.

Corporate culture is more visible and deliberate now. The company brand has its culture inherent in it in a larger proportion. However, I’d argue that corporate culture was never really overblown, and is actually becoming even more important as the modern workplace continues to evolve.

There are clear benefits to having a strong, unified company culture underlying your business’s operations. Some of them:

Identity of the company

Corporate culture contributes to the identity and values of your company. Employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders identify the culture of the company and deal with them accordingly. It’s a good way to set and maintain the direction of your employees, and without it, it’s hard to keep your company’s values coherent. The founders or promoters or management set the tone for the culture in the company and it cannot be revisited and changed as and when needed.

Attracting good talent

Good corporate culture attracts best talent to a company. The high salary and perks themselves are not enough to attract best talents, particularly from the new generation. They look to the culture of the company along with or even over the CTC and perks. This is also true for customers, vendors and even investors. There many ways candidates can get to know about the culture and environment of prospective employers through search engines, and company review platforms like Glassdoor, Indeed etc.

Retention of employees

Attracting best talents is not enough, retaining them is more challenging. A strong company culture attracts better talent and, more importantly, retains them for long. When people feel like they belong to an organization, they’re more likely to stick around for the long term. That means lower turnover, fewer new hires to deal with, and better chemistry among your team. ESOP or Equity compensation, for example, are some ways to make employees feel inclusive and be part of the company.

Image of the company

We all have a tendency to identify certain ethos with the company brand. Company brand reflects not just its market share, quality of product and service, market cap, and other business metrics but its culture too to a great extent. Corporate culture also adds to your brand identity. If you treat your employees well and have a fun-loving corporate atmosphere, your customers will see you as a fun-loving, generous brand. Depending on your target demographics, that could be a major boon for sales and customer loyalty.

Loyalty of stakeholders

This is one important benefit often overlooked in the discussion of corporate culture. A company having good culture keeps its vendors, customers, investors and other stakeholders loyal to the company. They will extend a helping hand to such companies in their need of the hour. Culture helps enhance the image and loyalty of all stakeholders of a company.

Culture is very, if not more, important for small and new businesses, many entrepreneurs of start-ups quite naturally tend to take on a great deal of responsibility themselves. However, when the company grows and adds employees, the authoritarian, concentrated management style that the business owner practiced successfully in a very small company can become detrimental.

Millennials are the generation driving the workplace changes of the near future. If you cannot attract millennial talent, the growth of your company may stagnate, and you could eventually hit a talent shortage. That said, millennials desire a strong company culture more than anything else when deciding who to work for. If you don’t have a strong or appealing company culture, you’re going to start losing the game.

Work-life balance is of paramount importance to the new generation workers. I will mention one example of how companies address this expectation; Amazon India Head have recently asked all its employees not to reply or respond to any emails or calls from 6 pm to 8 am.

It’s also worth noting that the modern start-up economy has added some interesting variables to the entrepreneurial community. They have virtually unlimited digital resources to build companies-and those companies have the potential to take off or fail relatively quickly. This increases the need for differentiation in the market, especially in competitive industries, and forces entrepreneurs to find a sticking point for workers who may otherwise leave you after a short-term assignment.

Some facts and statistics to support why corporate culture is important

A Columbia University study shows that the likelihood of job turnover at an organization with high company culture is a mere 13.9 percent, whereas the probability of job turnover in low company cultures is 48.4 percent.

Likewise, the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick found that happy workers are 12 percent more productive than the average worker, and unhappy workers are 10 percent less productive.

Statistics from New Century Financial Corporation indicate that companies with happy employees outperform the competition by 20 percent, earn 1.2-1.7 percent more than their peer firms, and are 2.1 percent above industry benchmarks. Happy workers are also more likely to solve difficult problems faster.

A 142-country Gallup report on the “State of the Global Workplace” shows that 63 percent of employees are not engaged at work and 24 percent are actively disengaged, leaving a mere 13 percent of workers who are engaged in the work that they do.

An often-cited example of good company culture is Google. Though very large in size, people who work there describe it as having a small-company feel where no one hesitates to “spike a volleyball across the net at a corporate officer.”

But the culture of a company is not just about whether you’re allowed to chuck balls at your boss – it’s also determined by what the company stands for and how it treats others. Google gives back to the community as well as to countries around the world in the form of financial aid, restoring public parks, and Googlers volunteering their time.

Taking its cue from 3M, Google started its own “20% Time” program which resulted in the creations of Gmail, Google Earth, and Google Talk, to name a few. Similarly, Hewlett-Packard Labs gives its employees personal creative time during which new products have been created, such as clear bandages and optical films that reflect light which are both on the market.

Disadvantages of having a PEO

While PEO has many benefits, it is also essential to highlight some of the disadvantages of having a PEO.

1. As a co-employer, there will be relinquishing some control over your business.

2. The PEOs usually manage HR functions for different organizations, so your business might not have exclusive and in-depth attention.

3. Since you will be in a co-employer agreement, you need to burden equal responsibilities with the PEO if any dispute or issue arises.

4. Know that PEOs just support you in administrative and HR tasks and do not replaces your obligations.

Communication

Communication is not just a useful tool to keep your employees engaged. But it is also a very powerful way to build a collaborative and supportive people culture. Organisations that practice open and transparent communication, encourage two-way communication, reinforce their trust in their employees, and succeed in building a positive people-oriented culture. Thus, organisations must invest significant time and money in nurturing a strong communication framework within the organisation.

Be open to feedback

One of the important ways to build a supportive culture is welcoming feedback and concerns of your people. Organisation leaders must not restrict themselves to open door policy and reach out to their people to gather thoughts. This also circles back to the open communication framework. The purpose remains the same to gain the employees’ trust so that they feel safe to share their concerns, ideas, feedback, and praise.

Investing in the well-being of the employees

Organisations that invest in workplace culture find it a lot more comfortable to earn their people’s trust. Employees feel supported when they see that their organisations are concerned and continuously invest in their well-being. Jennifer Encinger, counsellor and manager with Fairview’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP), says, “I think the biggest thing people need to feel supported at work is, knowing that their company is invested in them as people. If an employee feels their company cares about them and is loyal to them, he or she is more likely to be loyal to the company.”

Consider national culture

Managers and decision-makers should also take into account the national culture in which the company operates while framing the company culture. Managers must be well-versed with communication styles and national cultures when communicating with their team members.

Traits of a supportive people culture 

Do you have a supportive culture? How do you know you have a supportive culture? Know the different traits of a supportive people culture.

           You have a positive work environment: Conduct a survey and find how your employees feel about their work environment. Are your managers capable of resolving conflicts among team members and building a holistic and productive work culture?

          Invest in the personal development of the employees: Are you investing enough in the personal development of your people? Are they satisfied with these initiates or there is a scope to do more? Asking your people and conducting surveys can help you to gauge your current standing.

         Do you work actively towards investing in the personal developments of the employees? Do your EAP counsellors work closely with employees to assist them in bringing in any behavioural changes? If so, you are doing it just right!

Measure, tweak and move on.

Assessing the organisational culture is a crucial step to help you maintain the culture that you’re building. Whatever changes you bring in the workplace or introduce new programs to support people’s culture, it is important to measure the outcome. That’s the only proven way to understand if you are on the right path. But how do you measure culture? One way to do it is to identify key metrics like the values, degree of hierarchy, people and task orientations, etc., and conduct surveys or focus group discussions around these matrices. Try to gauge how your people feel about these pointers.

An ideal culture survey should cover the following:

Cultural assessment: employees should be able to rate the organisation’s culture and raise their concerns and praise. Involve and encourage everyone in the organisation to take part in the survey.

Analyse the result: HR leaders and key management stakeholders should sit together and analyse the survey results. Find out what is going well and what are the areas of improvement. Ensure you communicate the findings and the next step to your people.