Introduction
The work environment can be defined as the atmosphere surrounding employees and impacts their performance in the organization. Having a positive or ideal work environment within an organization significantly influences employee engagement, morale, performance and productivity. A perfect work environment determines how employees would be willing to participate in the organization, collaborate with other workers, their level of innovation, and how long they would like to continue being an employee of the company. Therefore, a positive work environment leads to increased employee performance, which steers the company into increased profits and overall performance. As a result, understanding an ideal work environment, policies and practices that can promote cohesive company culture and the impacts of diversity and morality is essential in improving employee and company performance.
An ideal work environment is characterized by Work/Life Balance, reward and value for employees’ contributions, recognition for hard work, high pay, challenging and meaningful tasks, and competitive compensation. Challenging and meaningful work is important to employee performance since it ensures tasks and work assigned are challenging yet interesting and exciting, contributing to employee motivation and unique innovations. Competitive compensation entails pay increases and providing opportunities and chances, including profit sharing and bonuses for top-performing employees. Recognition for hard work is another factor that positively impacts the productivity of employees. This is because the employees feel valued and appreciated and hence feel obligated to provide only the best performance (Geue, 2018). Therefore, rewarding and acknowledging employees who put more effort into improving their work ensures that they remain motivated to continue providing the best outcomes.
On the other hand, encouraging life/work balance in an organization is an essential part of employee performance. Work/life balance ensures that employees have a sense of balance in individual and work life by providing flexible work schedules, recognizing personal requests and needs, and generating a supportive work climate supporting family and personal obligations and responsibilities. This results in improved employee job satisfaction which maintains their will to continue working for the company without losing interest. This promotes the loyalty of hardworking and committed employees to the organization, ensuring that great talents are retained. Lastly, providing employees with high pay, allowances and health benefits ensures that workers are always motivated to deliver quality work, which will ensure that they get to keep their position within the organization (Mihretu & Gopal, 2019). High salaries give employees feelings of security and enable them to feel accomplished by having a ranking of high status that they appreciate.
Policies and Practices That Create a Cohesive Organizational Culture
Cohesive organizational culture is a culture that enables employees to develop teamwork behaviors. This kind of culture is achieved by ensuring that employees engage in information sharing, share a common purpose, as well as develop transparency, empowerment and trust among workers. To start with, sharing information is one factor that allows employees to work effectively with other workers. Information sharing among employees enhances their willingness or commitment to make others comfortable at work, encouraging other workers to do the same for others, thereby promoting togetherness and teamwork in accomplishing the set tasks. Secondly, sharing a common purpose provides employees with a reason, vision objective to meet, cooperate with others and make decisions on delivering desired outcomes (Riisla et al., 2021). Each team member should be aware of what long-term goals they expect to accomplish. As a result, employees work towards the completion of company goals which promotes a cohesive company culture.
On the other hand, transparency, empowerment and trust promote teamwork by ensuring that employees can work together to achieve company objectives. Trust is an essential key in creating and maintaining teams in a company. A trusting individual is open to exchanging ideas with others, collaborating, enforcing little control and accepting influence. This results in a range of solutions and efficient utilization of the skills of other employees. However, trust cannot be possible without transparency, and hence teamwork would not be successful (Geue, 2018). Transparency in the workplace creates honest and clear communication, which generates trust among employees and encourages teamwork.
Managerial Behaviors That Should Be Common in a Great Working Environment
An ideal work environment can be enhanced by managerial behaviors such as involving team members in important decision-making, acknowledging and appreciating individual accomplishments and encouraging clear and open communication. Involving employees in decision-making enables leaders to make their employees feel appreciated and valued in the company. This makes employees develop trust with their leader as their inputs on problem solutions are always considered. Due to this, an ideal work climate is created, which further motivates employees to participate to ensure that they provide their best work. Second, acknowledging and appreciating individual achievements inspires employees to improve their performance. Moreover, recognition develops and improves the self-esteem of employees, which drives them to deliver more and promotes a positive work climate. Lastly, advocating for clear and open communication is a significant key that fosters a positive work environment (Ariussanto et al., 2020). Furthermore, open communication allows employees to raise issues that might be uncomfortable for them and would like solved. This ensures that an ideal work environment is improved in the process.
Impact of Ethics/Morality and Diversity Issues on an Organization
Organizations are founded on society, and society is comprised of individuals with different backgrounds. As a result, these people from the community come from unique backgrounds and ethics hence creating diversity in the company. Having employees from diverse backgrounds equips an organization with exceptional and a wide range of skills giving it a competitive advantage. Moreover, encourages the generation of more creative and innovative solutions, improving the probability of an effective answer to a problem (Tamunomiebi & Ehior, 2019). Additionally, organizations that intend to expand their global market use their diverse network of employees, especially if they hire from different countries and cultures. The main benefit to such kinds of companies is language and cultural diversity, which helps in successful company expansion.
On the other hand, ethics can be considered as a moral belief that guides an individual’s behavior, ideas and attitudes within an organization and helps in distinguishing right from wrong. Ethical behavior enhances effectiveness and efficiency in performance, helps maintain company reputation and aids in evading fines that might arise from unethical behavior (Tamunomiebi & Ehior, 2019). However, the company’s image can be ruined if there is unethical behavior in the organization. This leads to the reduction of the firm’s wealth, which is an outcome of a significant decrease in stock price.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the paper has demonstrated what is considered an ideal work environment, policies and practices that can promote cohesive company culture and the impacts of diversity and morality in improving employee and company performance. First, a positive work environment is characterized by Work/Life Balance, reward and value for the contributions of employees, recognition for hard work, offering high pay, challenging and meaningful tasks, and competitive compensation. Second, policies and practices such as engaging in information sharing, sharing a common purpose, and developing transparency, empowerment and trust among workers help promote organizational culture. Thirdly, diversity helps organizations be efficiently equipped with a wide range of skills that help a company enhance its performance. Finally, ethical behavior is essential in enhancing efficiency and effectiveness while maintaining the company’s reputation and evading fines that might arise from unethical behavior.
References
Ariussanto, K., Tarigan, Z., Sitepu, R., & Singh, S. (2020). Leadership style, employee engagement, and work environment to employee performance in manufacturing companies. SHS Web of Conferences, 76, 1-9.
Geue, P. (2018). Positive practices in the workplace: Impact on team climate, work engagement, and task performance. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 54(3), 272-301.
Mihretu, S., & Gopal, M. (2019). Effect of Work Environment on Organizational Performance: A Comparative Study on Arjo Dedessa and Finchaa Sugar Factory. International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Production, 32(4), 1-14.
Riisla, K., Wendt, H., Babalola, M., & Euwema, M. (2021). Building cohesive teams—the role of leaders’ bottom-line mentality and behavior. Sustainability, 13(14), 1-19.
Tamunomiebi, D., & Ehior, E. (2019). Diversity and ethical issues in the organizations. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(2), 839-864.