Creating a culture of service involves training your employees to emphasize service in their interactions with customers, vendors, and one another. It’s not something they should do just because it’s expected of them. Instead, they should understand why it’s important to add quality to the services they provide day to day. These activities can help you teach your employees the value of creating and living within a culture of service.
Create a Greater Sense of Purpose
Everyone knows that commercial businesses operate to make a profit, but there should be something more to your organization’s purpose. Just as consumers look for something of social value in the brands they follow, your employees also want to know that your company cares about the community. Your company should seek to improve society or the world somehow, either through the sale of your products or through separate philanthropic endeavors. In short, give your employees a reason to feel pride in their jobs.
Have Fun With Your Team
This tip is a little trickier to pull of in the times of Covid. It can feel like fun is further away than ever right now, and it’s even harder to feel like fun is attainable when we can’t gather together in the same spaces. But it’s important to remember that all the tools that allow us to work together can also allow us to congregate together. Consider hosting a bi-weekly virtual themed trivia night to recreate a classic company outing. You can even rotate hosts which allows the trivia to reflect a bit of themselves in their work to enhance connection between employees. Hosting online spaces for board and video games but be a unique way to get younger co-workers engaged with one another. It may require a little creativity, but their are still plenty of virtual ways for employee to connect. In having a little fun with your employees, you can allow them to appreciate the service culture from a different perspective.
Broaden the Lines of Communication
You should also be looking for more ways to communicate with your team. In addition to maintaining an open-door policy, which encourages your team to share ideas with you, try mingling with them. A spontaneous walk around the office or the production floor can give you new insight into the challenges your team faces daily while giving everyone a chance to interact with you in a less formal setting. This also helps you see where your employees can improve in adopting a more service-oriented culture.
As you begin implementing these practices, your team will adopt a new way of thinking, which will help them function in a more service-oriented capacity. They may even develop ideas of their own for promoting a culture of service even further. After a while, neither you nor your employees will consider operating your business in any other way.