Who goes first?
Your corporate culture is defined by every move you make.
Your phone pings just as a fellow employee walks into your office …
If you’re like most of us, you move to check that message. It will only take a minute, right? Maybe, but let’s step back. If you take the phone before the person, what message are you sending?
As we explore in this post, the workplace culture is a dynamic, living organism – more than the sum of its parts (employees) yet very much dependent on each and every person at every point in time.
So, back to our impulse to address the message before the person. If we grab the phone, we have just put the person second.
Your connections are your corporate culture
We human beings are social creatures who thrive in the presence of meaningful connections and relationships. Putting people first involves fostering environments that encourage and nurture these connections.
By valuing personal connections, we create a supportive network that reduces competition as it enables us to share our ideas and work together to address challenges. There’s a positive energy to that, a forward momentum that can be exhilarating. What's more, data shows it has a huge impact on your bottom line.
When individuals feel supported and valued for who they are, they experience higher levels of happiness, creativity, and productivity. Since this isn’t the norm in the workplace, it requires our conscious effort. It essentially requires retraining ourselves.
Well-being: internal vs external success
In a world that prizes external productivity and success, it’s a game changer to create environments that recognize the value of internal well-being. Mind you, we’re not suggesting group therapy sessions or anything of that nature. We’re suggesting a culture where people are valued over things – simply put, the person in front of us gets the attention instead of that new phone message.
Of course, putting people first is not the orientation we’ve been taught. From primary school through to the workplace, we’ve been taught that competition is king. By competing with everyone else, we were told, we would do our personal best - and that would bring us everything we wanted.
The problem is, that doesn’t seem to have worked. While it may have brought material success, most of us would agree it has not brought happiness. Going that route, we’ve too often sacrificed our internal well-being for an external system of rewards.
Putting People First
In a world that is constantly evolving, it is more important than ever to put people first. Prioritizing human well-being by attending to relationships and empowering individuals benefits everyone, building a culture that transforms property management companies.
By adopting a people-first approach, we build an inclusive culture where every individual has the opportunity to thrive. We call this approach People Over Things, and it’s the kingpin of our culture change initiatives Contact us to learn how we can transform your culture and kick your company into high gear.
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