Through the high-tech revolution and capital shifts, you might think that machines are doing almost everything and human input is becoming less important to the organization. Simply put, in these times human connection is even more critical. With the growth of AI as a tool, the most complex work is now handled by your team. With shifting responsibilities, empowering your leadership, and appreciating individual team members at all levels of your organization’s workforce is fundamental. Human resources are vital to your company’s success and treating your people accordingly will boost their morale and inspire them to be more committed to achieving the company’s goals. This will not only set the workplace apart from competitors, but it will also generate success and maximum growth for your company. The best companies have realized this and are continually committed to developing a people-centric culture at the organizational level to make positive impacts and progress.
What is a People-Centric Culture?
A people-centered culture involves leadership having a profound understanding of the needs of their team members and getting to know what they need to maximize performance and job satisfaction. Nurturing relationships and connection with your people can proactively reveal any barriers your team may be facing. When leaders and team members have this kind of relationship there’s transparency and open communication, which empowers everyone to bring solutions to challenges faced and ultimately elevate results.
How Do You Nurture a People-Centric Culture?
Developing a people-centric culture at the organizational level takes time, but the benefits will last for years to come. There are different strategies that can be employed to cultivate a people-centric culture.
Be one with the Workforce
A workforce that feels appreciated will always go out of their way to maintain productivity in their work. Employee engagement surveys are a great way to start towards developing a people-centric culture, but your time and involvement with the team is even more crucial. Your presence and interest in them will make them feel appreciated. This will help you to invest more in understanding the needs of your team, and tailor specific solutions to address them. Observing your team firsthand will always offer profound insights that will empower you to strategize appropriately and nurture a people-centric culture.
Give them Choices
What happens when people are allowed to work in conditions that suit them best? An effective workplace design that offers choices to people positively fosters a people-centric culture. Empowering your people’s flexibility to make decisions on work patterns that suit them while maintaining appropriate work habits to meet business needs, enhances productivity, and provokes an attitude-shift in your people. Many organizations have transformed office spaces into informal collaboration spaces ditching the traditional approach of a desk all day. This approach encourages your people to be creative and innovative by working in comfortable and free areas. Breaking traditions has become the culture of organizations making people feel appreciated and comfortable in their work environments.
Are Your People Comfortable Enough?
It is a fact that working nine to eight hours a day can be an overwhelming task for your people. Nurturing a people-centric company culture will require the leadership to go out of their way and ensure the team’s comfort in those hours. The incorporation of more human-centered approaches at the office makes people at the company comfortable, feel appreciated, and valued as essential stakeholders at the workplace. It is the little things that matter like rest areas for unwinding, meeting, or being social. Ensure that they feel at home while at the office through simple comforts that support productivity and community.
Enabling Flow of Information
An inhibited flow of information can limit engagement and solutions. A people-centric culture will always maintain the policy of the free flow of information as part of the company culture. This type of culture allows people in organizations to share, cooperate, and connect in profound ways. Openly sharing information motivates creators to actualize their ideas with others and work pro-actively to make operations more productive. This strategy allows your people to cultivate solutions and get things done.
An organization that recognizes the free flow of information encourages staff to belong to a community where they feel united and heard. It also creates a platform to voice needs and allows leadership to support the team and make feedback actualized.
Don’t Forget Empathy
Fashioning a more robust and loyal workforce requires an organization’s leadership to recognize, appreciate, and offer help when the people in the organization are facing tough or disturbing situations. Become part of the solution when team members are feeling low, depressed, disturbed, or have a difficult situation outside the workplace. These situations can often feel overwhelming and significantly impact the productivity and motivation of your team. Your leadership can help by providing support and showing empathy. Some mitigation might be offering some time off, providing counseling services, a listening unbiased ear, or even offering small tokens or gestures to brighten their day and let them know you care. Empathy is a powerful tool in nurturing a people-centric culture in organizations.
Where and How Do You Start?
All this is just what your organization wants, right? Start making these changes right away to ensure that a people-centric culture saves your organization and empowers your leadership to make positive strides in growth. At Etech, we have been developing a people-centric culture for years, a constant work in progress, with our people at the center, that has helped us to grow and meet the ever-changing needs of our team, customers, and communities.
