CAREER & HIRING ADVICE

An organization’s company culture is like a guiding compass, leading employees and paving the way to their future careers.

Company culture embeds itself into every aspect of an organization. 

The company’s vision and values, the working environment, and, most importantly, how motivated its employees feel comprise the company culture.

Company culture drives employee expectations, work output, engagement, and retains top talent. 

Motivated employees create a positive team working environment — and work hard to elevate your company’s growth efforts. 

If you’ve been looking for ways to build a company culture that motivates your employees, reduces turnover, and helps you achieve your business’ overarching vision, you’ve come to the right place. 

In today’s article, we’re revealing eight specific strategies you can implement right away to build a company culture that motivates your employees.

Ready?

Let’s begin.

How to build a company culture that motivates your employees 

Here are eight practical ways to build a company culture that motivates your employees:

1. Create a vision and values statement that integrates into every aspect of your company culture 

The key to building a positive company culture is abiding by your company’s vision and values and integrating them into every aspect of your organization.

Your vision and values statement should reveal anything important your company stands for, including: 

• Your brand’s mission and overarching vision
• The code of ethics your company supports and enforces
• The key values that drive your company’s culture 

Your leadership team will need to embrace this tenfold, and you may even consider creating employee ambassador roles to drive this home further. Leading by example is key here. 

It’s also crucial to integrate your vision and values statement into company communication, updates, and meetings. 

A simple way to facilitate this is by using content marketing techniques like starting an internal company blog or newsletter.

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If you’re pressed for time, consider hiring a professional copywriter or content editor to take care of the copywriting for you. 

If you choose this technique, we recommend creating a content calendar and weekly meeting recap, so your content team has a structure in place for creating consistent content.

2. Place a core focus on meaningful work 

You can’t expect employees to feel motivated at the office if they don’t feel like their work has meaning. 

Placing a core focus on meaningful work helps employees feel motivated and keeps them satisfied.

If you’ve ever had a job role that made you cringe, you know exactly what we’re talking about here.

Not sure how to foster purpose and meaning in the workplace? Here’s a checklist you can run through with your team:

• Make sure employees are taking care of projects and tasks they care about
• Set up training so employees can sharpen the skills they value most
• Give employees the opportunity to move up in the career path they’d most enjoy
• Consider working with your employees to co-create roles that are meaningful to them
• Make sure employees are doing work they love, they’re good at, and they find interesting 
• Make sure employees understand that their work solves important problems
• Give employees the kind of work they can’t stop thinking about (in a positive way)
• Give employees the freedom to lead their own projects and workload
• Express to employees how their work is significant to your company
• Always make sure employees have a realistic workload to avoid overwhelm and burnout
• Encourage employees to have a healthy work-life balance
• Offer plenty of opportunities to learn and grow with your company

If you’re unsure what kind of work your employees consider meaningful, ask. You can survey them, host meetings, or interview them one-on-one to learn more about what they’re looking for. 

Offering competitive pay, benefits, and perks your employees care about can also contribute to employees having meaningful work. 

How?

Because now they have the whole package. The ability to move up how they want, work on work they love, get paid well, and have perks and benefits? What’s more motivating than that?

3. Make giving and receiving feedback a norm 

Employee motivation is fostered through a healthy give and take. Making sure your employees feel seen, heard, and cared for is pivotal to inspiring them to feel intrinsically motivated. A company intranet can help with this.

And that’s where giving and receiving feedback comes in. 

The key to receiving feedback? Make sure you actually implement the changes your employees ask for — as you’d expect from them. It’s a two-way street.

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The key to giving feedback is focusing on being positive, constructive, and solution-focused. Your goal is to recognize your employees’ strengths and give them tools to foster the skills they need to thrive. 

Giving and receiving feedback is also a part of building trust and connection with your employees. Being approachable is key here. 

When employees feel like they can talk to you, they’ll naturally feel more at ease about opening up to you and receiving constructive feedback.

4. Take diversity and inclusion efforts seriously 

Diversity and inclusion efforts directly impact how seen, safe, happy, accommodated and accepted your employees feel. 

Making sure employees feel included encourages them to show up and give their best selves to work.

Here are some ways to integrate diversity and inclusion efforts into your organization:

• Host ongoing diversity and inclusion training 
• Discuss the history of diversity and inclusion and how they’ve affected workplaces  
• Make sure the importance of diversity and inclusion is clearly documented in your corporate documents, policies, procedures, and company messaging
• Host workshops about how to communicate respectfully with minority groups
• Host additional training for your leadership team and stress the importance of leading by example 
• Implement a strict no-tolerance policy against harassment 
• Ask employees who belong to minority groups what they need in order to feel safe and included at work
• Ask employees who belong to minority groups if they’d like to lead diversity and inclusion workshops — or start a club 

5. Show your team members you care about what they care about 

Frontline managers should make it an extra point to discover what each team member values to understand what factors will motivate them. 

In other words, if you want to inspire your team, you need to understand what they care about and why it matters. 

The easiest way to do this is to ask your employees what gets them riled up and what causes they hold close to their hearts. 

For instance, do your employees’ value breast cancer awareness? Then consider starting a breast cancer fundraiser at work to show your support. 

Are your team members avid about protecting the environment? Then consider starting a recycling program and letting your employees take the reins. 

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Creating and participating in solutions like these can also foster team engagement, team-building, and team camaraderie, which can encourage intrinsic motivation.

6. Foster connections outside of work 

Creating a company culture happens both in and out of the workplace. 

While focusing on building a strong company culture during office hours is crucial, there’s something special about the bonds you foster with your team outside of the workplace. 

Fostering connections with your team outside of work can lead to stronger bonds and happier employees. If you’ve ever had a close friend at work, then you know how good it feels to work with someone you care about.

Here are some ways to build motivation and strengthen employee connections outside of the workplace:

Host digital/hybrid events 

Bring your team closer together with digital or hybrid events, such as team movie night, team karaoke night, or participate in a fun cooking or creative workshop.

You can also host simple events like coffee chats and game days.