Creating a positive place to work

Workplace culture is the character and personality of your organisation. It is defined by your organisation’s leadership, values, traditions, beliefs, behaviours and attitudes.

Organisations with a positive culture, who value their workforce and provide a great place to work, have good retention rates. A positive culture also supports other areas of focus for retention, such as leadership, management and wellbeing, and inspires many business benefits. It offers a sense of shared identity, loyalty to the organisation, and influences what people think or do. Crucially, a positive workplace culture can impact the quality of care and support you provide.

Most employees experience workplace culture through the attitude and behaviours of their line manager, so it is important to equip them to be excellent people managers.

Top tips:

• Consult staff on your organisation’s culture and values through wide-ranging engagement methods to ensure you obtain and reflect diverse perspectives and input. Good ways to collate staff input include all-staff meetings, anonymised staff surveys/voting, feedback through line managers and team away days. Use this information to understand what your organisation’s culture is and where it ought to be by identifying and forming organisational values and behaviours. Be open and transparent throughout this co-designed and co-produced process.
• Consider developing a staff handbook or staff webpage on your intranet that explicitly outlines your workplace culture through its values and behaviours.
• Embed the values and behaviours you want to encourage into organisational policies and processes, such as recruitment initiatives, terms and conditions, wellbeing practices, and leadership and management.
• Ensure that your organisation’s culture is underpinned by regular communication and periodically reviewed to avoid remaining static, iterating your approach where necessary.

Case studies

Useful links

Skills for Care’s Creating a Positive Workplace Culture Toolkit

Local Government Association’s Organisational Culture and Change Management

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