It’s 2010—Let’s Support Positive Culture(s)

With the new year just days old, it’s time to rethink our corporate policies for everyones benefit.

Listed here are some great tips, suggestions, ideas and mentality changes to help your company run smoother, happier, and more efficiently in the next decade. Social media helped make companies be more transparent and open to change externally, now it’s time to bring that back internally as well.

Read over the list here—are there any you would add to this? How about you might remove?

*Note – I did not write this list, I got it from a McKinley Marketing newsletter that I cannot seem to find again. However, I do not want to claim credit for this list, just my intro thoughts concerning the principals.

  1. Conduct anonymous staff/volunteer happiness surveys.
  2. Ensure that volunteer assignments are meaningful.
  3. Make sure your culture embraces volunteer contributions.
  4. Make servant leadership and temperament a requirement for leadership positions (don’t elevate jerks).
  5. Treat persistent negativity by a staff member as a behavioral problem.
  6. Strongly encourage staff to take their vacation time and personal leave.
  7. Offer volunteer assignments that don’t require year long commitments.
  8. Create a simple personal-professional-organizational learning program for staff using local resources.
  9. Build learning experiences into every committee meeting.
  10. Send staff to visit members to help them understand members’ contributions to society.
  11. Take time to know volunteers well enough to learn what makes volunteering meaningful for them.
  12. Eliminate or moderate policies that deter flexibility.
  13. Create policies that promote flexibility.
  14. Encourage casual interaction among staff.
  15. Plan regular team meetings with prepared agendas.
  16. With volunteers, don’t assume everyone knows each other.
  17. Have fun, even in hard times.
  18. Get people’s creative juices flowing. Teach staff creativity and facilitation techniques.
  19. For volunteers, build a "strategy discussion" into every meeting.
  20. Recognize, reward, and thank your team for their hard work.
  21. Create a written, top-to-bottom volunteer recognition plan that recognizes volunteer performance at all levels.
  22. Hand write thank you notes to key volunteers every year.

Why We Should Embrace Positive Cultures

Sure that sounds great, but how will this new ‘attitude’ help out the bottom line.

  1. Leaders in positive cultures act with authenticity and earn trust.
  2. Positive cultures don’t promote negativity.
  3. Positive cultures advocate balance.
  4. Positive cultures promote personal and professional growth.
  5. Positive cultures understand the intrinsic motivations of their staff and volunteers.
  6. Life is hard enough. Positive cultures allow for flexibility for both staff and volunteers.
  7. Positive cultures encourage both formal and informal interaction.
  8. Positive cultures cultivate creativity and allow for fun.
  9. Positive cultures are genuinely appreciative of the contributions of staff and volunteers.