Besides the innovation in ideas, the young technology companies have been standing out because of their innovative culture of work.
It is common sense that startups have been growing in the past few years. According to some Lavca data (Latin-American Private Equity & Venture Capital Association), the young Brazilian companies raised – only in 2017 – more than R$2,86 billion in investments.
In order to guarantee a space when facing an already consolidated competition, one of the factors that most called the attention of even traditional companies is the differentiated work environment.
Despite looking like a space that is prone to distractions, international companies, such as Google or Facebook, or even Brazilian ones, such as Nubank, have shown that the idea is, in fact, able to improve the collaborators’ productivity.
Are you interested in getting to know the working model used by startups, that has been used as inspiration even to the most traditional companies at the market? So keep reading our article!
Understanding what is the innovative culture startup
Along with the popularity of the term startup and its creative way to use the work environment, it didn’t take long for companies that are smaller to adopt their own style for their respective businesses.
Far beyond only having differentiated and colorful rooms, in order to adopt the culture of a company, the entrepreneur must be attentive to the following points:
Company’s spirit
The big companies have started to use terms like vision and mission in their businesses to show how much they are focused on becoming a reference to the market. The problem is that the traditional companies when using these terms, do not have the habit of aligning their objectives with their employees.
On the other hand, the entrepreneurs of startups show not only their vision and mission but also transform the project on a lifestyle. The commitment is reflected all the corporative environment, valuing the collaborators, who will evolve from ordinary employees to members of a team.
How is the process made in practical terms? Follow up:
- beware of what you say or do: the entrepreneur must be the example. For that reason, what he says must be demonstrated. If you want the company to be an example in customer service, you can’t despise that on your day-to-day. Remember: the employees are a reflex of what you say and do;
- value your collaborators: for that, the entrepreneur must transmit his/her message for all in the same way, without prioritizing one collaborator and forgetting the other.
Physical appearance
The casual and relaxed environment can be seen as unproductive. However, startups think the opposite, and there is a reason for that. As we have said, a startup is a lifestyle for the entrepreneur and it ends up literally reflecting on the work environment. One of the best ways for the entrepreneur to show his/her passion for doing something bigger is through a change in the corporate environment.
By substituting closed rooms, gray environments, and even dark places, the environment becomes open, having a variety of colors and furniture. Everything has the objective of making the collaborator feel welcome inside the company, like a true community.
Getting to know how it is possible to implement a startup culture in a big company
As seen before, for a company to start using the startup culture, it has to take into consideration from the entrepreneur’s mentality to the physical environment for actuation. However, would that be enough?
The answer is: no! To keep the environment pleasant, young and in the search for continuous innovation, we need to observe the following details:
Celebrating intrapreneurship
In a nutshell, intrapreneurship is an entrepreneurial attitude inside a team of the company.
The search for continuous improvement, for innovation inside the sector in which one acts, dealing with the pressure of taking risks, allows a healthy competition, having as its focus to generate good results and discover new talents inside the company itself.
When completing the challenges, the personnel will feel more valued. And even if the environment is prone to distractions, they will focus on getting even more positive results.
Picking the leaders carefully
Startups precisely have the challenge of innovating and expanding rapidly. To keep the organization under control, it is natural that the company needs to count on leaders that act in different areas.
These professionals, when not habituated to the culture, may contradict the team that has already been operating in the company.
In order to avoid that, the entrepreneur has to look for leaders that understand the habits of a young company. The secret is to find people that would keep the initial values of the company, from happy hours to some fun in strategic times, such as a break during the afternoon.
Getting to know the benefits
Which are the benefits brought by a great change in culture? Besides keeping itself young and ever-growing in the market, the company will start to count on collaborators that are fully engaged and passionate about what they do.
In order to detail the idea, we have elaborated the following topics:
Increase in production
In spite of going against intuition, the companies that have already adopted the changes could see precisely the opposite. After all, this culture is not “only the mess” of different rooms.
As we have said before, when trusting the collaborators with the leadership of the projects, they feel more valued, engaged and committed to delivering results. With the objective of surpassing the goals, the person tends to increase their productivity.
Despite the fact that the environment focusses on a more humanized approach, it does not mean the employees can leave their professionalism aside. The workers that understand the culture vision start to see the activities as something pleasant and not only as something mandatory during the week.
The ones who don’t understand it, only take advantage of the comfort and do not produce. As in every company, they are rapidly dismissed from the corporation.
The environment also helps to increase the productivity. For the objective of augmenting the interaction among workers, the exchanging of ideas allows the production to become bigger.
Enhancement at the work environment
In this article, we have shown how much a relaxed work environment decreases the tense/tiresome environment created by an ordinary office of a corporation. After all, why would we make the situation worse for an adult that will spend a great part of his/her life in an office, closed and disinterested?
Having that in mind, Google started to use open-air spaces, which are varied and mainly colorful, for free time activities and to soften the heavy environment of work.
Moreover, normally, some of the startup environments are precisely thought to increase the interaction among workers. The exchange of ideas and experiences might resolve a problem or even generate new ideas for the business.
Satisfaction for the collaborator
People feel challenged to achieve all the goals when they are valued, when they are responsible for a project or invited to give their opinion in an activity, inside a diversified space.
By becoming responsible for the duties and counting on your colleagues’ support, the employee will be grateful not only for being welcomed but also for developing oneself professionally.
As we have seen in this article, the startup culture may seem, at first sight, something unproductive. However, by exploring the practices behind it, or even the reasons that make a company work that way; instead of facing work as a necessary evil, we change our concepts. We start to see it as a place that can engage, promote fun, promote knowledge and most importantly, that is opportune for professional growth.
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