There is strong research evidence to suggest that work culture in an organization might be one of the most underrated influences on a business’s success. Culture is the way of life of a group of persons like we were taught in school. Work culture in your organization would thus be the way of life or attitude towards work among the staff of a firm, and this is the first in a series of different work cultures.
An HR officer had her sister stopover at her office for a brief visit. What was supposed to be a brief visit ended up lasting from about 1:00 pm till the close of work, and with her door slightly ajar, the rest of the staff could hear the rings of their laughter throughout the office. No one said a thing about it, even though glances were exchanged.
By the next week, the receptionist had a male friend stop over to see her. He sat at the reception with her for the better part of four hours, and they kept chatting. Even though she was sitting in front of a desktop and holding a mouse, it was easy to see that she was doing more of the ‘gist’ than she was working.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Before long, every staff seemed to be having one visitor or the other dropping in to say hi, and no one said anything about it. When it was time for the third quarterly report of the year, it became clear that results have been gradually dwindling without much notice. One failed deadline here, another missed target there and every team’s performance had dropped by at least 30% over the space of two quarters.
What went wrong? It was the work culture.
One critical aspect of work culture is how employees spend their work hours. How do you ensure they are making the most of the work hours to the advantage of the team? Already there is some legislation here and there suggesting that employers should not reach out to their staff outside work hours. But how do we ensure that during the work hours, employees are actually working?
One aspect of work culture is that of receiving visitors during work hours. It is sad to know that most firms really have no clear policy on this, while some are just extreme. There is no regulation as to whether employees can receive visitors, and for how long. There is no one to say what the consequences would be if an employee spends more than say 10 minutes with a visitor. Everything is just left to assumption and in these cases, it takes one person doing the wrong thing to turn the firm inside out. You walk into some offices and you see staff perpetually on their mobile phones and you have to wonder if that is where all their tasks are confined to.
On the other end, we have some firms that have very harsh policies in this regard. Some go as far as refusing staff from making or taking any personal calls during work hours. I saw a post of a teacher who said that they had to submit their phones when signing in at the resumption of work and pick them up at the close of work. While this may help reduce distractions and probably increase productivity, I think it may be a little on the extreme.
What should startup entrepreneurs do?
Have a defined work culture. The internet and even the environment around us is rife with distractions. It only takes your eyes straying off work for a minute and you may struggle to return to work. Without a clearly defined policy on this, you may spend so much paying staff who would not be maximizing their actual potentials. Depending on the sector you find yourself in, you would have to define what would work for your business and what will not. It is not a one-size-fits-all scenario so I cannot tell you what to use.
Be careful not to make it too extreme. But also, do not leave it to assumption. Make it clear upon recruitment that you are particularly concerned about what they do during work hours. Culture is never left to assumption, and if you don’t fix it from the beginning, you will have a hard time making a change much later on. There is something about the culture that is contagious so that once new staff is recruited, they observe the older staff and simply pick it up from there. If a new staff resumes with so much zeal to work and prove his worth, it is difficult to keep that enthusiasm, if all he sees around are older staffs that do the barest minimum.