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Team Culture Is Key for Your Company and Future Partnerships

Team culture has been a bigger and bigger part of the conversation, as big tech companies like Google have popularized campuses filled with perks and goodies, flooding their competitors with the same. How many places have you worked at that touted bean bag chairs or a ping pong table?

You know that culture is important for your own team. Creating a company that inspires your employees to wake up in the morning and get excited to go to work in an environment where they can successfully be themselves is the ultimate goal. Zemoga certainly ascribes to this philosophy, which is why we're one of the highest rated companies in our space on Glassdoor, with a 4.9 star rating.

Below, you'll find some ways to take a litmus test of your own company’s culture, and how to apply it to every employee and partner you work with on a daily basis.

The best ways to approach team culture as a leader

Those in a leadership position should consider this: would you want to work at your company? Being in charge can sometimes create a disadvantage because you’re not as involved in the day-to-day operations of your team. But an easy way to remember to keep your team happy is to treat them like people.

Obvious, right? But hard to put into practice. Treating your employees like you'd prefer to be treated requires trusting and empowering them, and being open to their feedback. The best leaders have an open door policy and create a dialogue between everyone in the office, regardless of their position in the hierarchy. 

Part of growing that trust is to avoid making false promises. Transparency about the health and well-being of your business creates a system of confidence—they know you are confident in them, and they can be confident in the future success of the business, their livelihood.

  • Be a human
  • Trust your employees
  • Practice transparency

What a successful team culture looks like for employees

Face it: you spend a lot of time at your job, and if you don’t get along with and respect the people at your office, it makes that part of your life very difficult. The way your employees treat themselves, and others will make or break your company’s spirit.

Let employees know that they have pathways to success, room for growth that they’re actually interested in, and that the company is invested in their continuing education in their field. Empowering each individual to be the best they can be will create a team of experts that is proud of their work.

Once you’ve boosted up the individual, the chances of collaboration also go up. Teammates who are happy with their lot in the company will jump at the chance to join their fellow employees to bring great ideas to life.

By focusing on interpersonal relationships, the experience of being in an office will become a positive one that people look forward to having. When your employees feel emotionally and mentally supported, they’ll be able to do better work. Once again, it’s treating people like humans and enabling them to do the same.

How to measure a successful culture

Your employees are smart. If you’re centering your company’s culture around artifice, they’ll sniff it out from a mile away. But if the culture is authentic to the humans in your company and represents their needs, as well as yours, the company’s culture at large will shine through.

Creating a triangle of trust between individual employees at the bottom and the goals of the company at the top is an essential part of ensuring your employees feel the same sense of pride they’d feel about belonging to a sports team. If you trust someone to get your deliverable to you on time, you’d trust them to pass the ball to you when you have an open shot.

Ultimately, if employees are happy, they’ll stay. Even if they leave, they may boomerang back once they see the difference of culture at other organizations.

One of the best ways to look at the success of your team culture is to measure client satisfaction. If your organization has created a platform for employees to be themselves, feel supported, and bring their expertise, your clients will see that. Culture can be a sales tool, if your partners are telling friends and colleagues about the great experience they had with your company. To recap, the most important factors when it comes to your company's culture are:

  • Authenticity
  • Triangle of trust
  • Retention
  • Word of mouth

Why your digital development partner should have a great culture, too

Knowing that you’ve done all you can to cultivate a welcoming team culture that will help your teams grow as individuals and groups is a great place to be when you start shopping around for a digital development partner.

Are your partners driven by loyalty, collaboration, and friendship the same way your company is? Do you see them putting people before profit? How much access will your partnership give you to their company’s leadership?

Ping pong tables can be a catalyst to help people bond. But the true measurements of a great team culture go beyond games, to the core of your company’s humanity. Honing your own culture will help you recognize not only the steps, but spot when a potential partner hasn’t put in the same amount of effort.

Looking to create a lasting partner that will align with your company's culture? Let's talk!

About the author

Carlos Ferro joined Zemoga close to 13 years ago and is currently COO and Partner. His passion has always been to help team members reach their potential by empowering them to contribute quality work to the clients we service. Keeping a perfect balance between culture and quality delivery is what he strives for.

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