Introduction
The working environment in an organization plays an essential role in defining employees’ productivity because it determines physical and emotional comfort for the workers. Renowned companies like Hilton, McDonald’s, DHL, Cisco, and Google provide enormous benefits to their staff. In contrast, many other firms like Facebook, GameStop, CSX, and Union Pacific seem to receive media attention for the absence of professionalism. Since my employment history is limited to private tutoring, I asked one of my neighbors to describe her experience in a biotechnology company. She worked in the start-up firm for three years and seemed to develop a twofold opinion about that workplace. My neighbor seemed to be satisfied with her workload and salary of $25 per hour. However, she talked about excessive unprofessional behavior and the lack of unity among employees that discouraged her from continuing to have any associations with them. The examples of unpleasant situations that she witnessed in this firm were gossiping, harassment, reporting false results, and an unclear mission. A great working environment should provide good salaries, growth opportunities, define a company’s goals, and establish the rules for ethical behavior at a workplace.
Great Working Environment
The quality of a workplace can be determined by employees’ job satisfaction, overall performance, and an organization’s success on the market. First of all, the excellent working environment is built upon a safe and comfortable workspace. When the staff has a sense of discomfort or danger, they are under constant pressure and stress, known to have long-term adverse health consequences. For example, chronic stress can cause sleep disturbance, hormonal imbalance, metabolic syndrome, and immune dysfunction. Conversely, a clean and comfortable environment enables a positive attitude to job duties and increased interest in high performance to achieve the best possible outcome in the company’s projects. Moreover, a non-discriminatory attitude towards all workers encourages a healthy culture in an organization. Although in this entrepreneurial era, everyone seems to know about choosing the career path based on one’s passions and interests, the financial component remains to be an essential incentive. Therefore, the second quality of a good workplace is the satisfying salary that matches the workload. Furthermore, employees should have an opportunity for professional growth, which can be facilitated by additional teaching and training with the subsequent advancement of task complexity.
Policies and Practices for a Cohesive Organizational Culture
Creating unity in an organization is critical for attaining prosperity which largely depends on a collective effort. Still, cohesive organizational culture is not a random process that can happen naturally in any firm with time. Indeed, particular policies and practices need to be implemented to create coherence. The first practice that can be useful in achieving this goal is hiring people that possess similar core values, work ethic, and beliefs. This approach is probably one of the effective ways to build a culture of connected minds with knowledge and skills to perform their duties well. Secondly, the company leaders should have a strong connection with their team; thus, an open-door policy is an excellent strategy to reduce hierarchy and expand opportunities for novel suggestions and active involvement of the staff. The third practice that can encourage solidarity among workers is having regular meetings to discuss the company’s goals and core values. Fourthly, creating healthy competition between different teams will boost the general performance and improve coordination between employees.
Managerial Behaviors
A great working environment should practice two managerial behaviors to ensure emotional comfort for employees. The first behavior is to have an equally positive attitude to all workers. Indeed, although people are social creatures, they all desire to receive a personalized approach and praise for small achievements because the brain’s reward circuit elicits excitement from a prize for successful task completion. Sending an e-mail thanking every team member for an outstanding job or giving small gift cards to workers for their birthdays creates a positive culture in a company. Moreover, having regular feedback meetings for each employee to discuss their performance and opportunities for professional development is crucial. The second approach is establishing a self-example of professional behavior and commitment to work because the team needs to see that the objectives dictated by the leadership are realistic. For example, the company leaders should try to start their workday earlier than the staff members, take responsibility, admit mistakes, respect others, and promote transparency. Conversely, workers may view it as a burden rather than a routine behavior.
Ethics/Morality and Diversity Issues in an Organization
It appears that the ethical and moral issues create the central conflict in organizations, affecting their success. The job contract or a separate document should clearly state employers’ and employees’ moral and legal responsibilities. Furthermore, all these rules should be explained during the introductory training sessions for new personnel. For example, if a firm sells goods, their ethical norm can be utilizing only high-quality materials for production. Another example of moral behavior is preventing any forms of harassment and discrimination at the workplace. Supporting a colleague who experiences personal or health challenges is also a form of ethical conduct. When moral norms of a company are breached or not maintained, it results in loss of motivation and creates a sense of insecurity among workers. For instance, in my neighbor’s case, such unethical practices as emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and falsifying laboratory results were typical, causing high staff turnover rates. Another critical aspect of a successful organization is diversity, which creates a rich culture with diverse product and service improvement ideas. Indeed, the lack of diversity in corporations leads to stagnation and a decline of performance on the market.
Conclusion
To sum up, the working environment determines a company’s productivity; therefore, it is crucial to create physically and emotionally comfortable conditions for workers. Different corporations have various attitudes to their staff’s satisfaction, enlisting some of them in the best workplaces and others in the opposite group. According to my neighbor’s narrative, salary is not the primary incentive for some workers to continue their affiliations with their employers who practice unethical behavior. I would consider the work environment to be outstanding when the company employees get fair payment for their work, safety at the workplace, non-discrimination, and opportunities for updating their knowledge and skills. Furthermore, ensuring that all workers know the firm’s core values and goals is critical for maintaining ethical conduct. The ideal workplace for me would be a consulting company where I would work with clients directly and receive about $70,000 per year with the possibility of becoming a co-owner in the future. Finally, I am relatively good at multitasking; thus, taking multiple responsibilities and healthy competition would be a thriving environment for me.