6 Traits of a Productive, Innovative Culture & How to Build One

We’ve discussed before how to develop high-performing teams that foster a culture of innovation and lead to a productive workforce which produces value for your customers. But how do you actually attract the best people to work for you? It’s all about the culture. In this post, we’ll explore six traits of a high-performing culture.

  1. Integrity/Trust – Employees have to know they’re working for an employer with a strong and honest character. This trust is often developed with strong communication about expectations between the employer and employee. If an employee knows exactly what is expected of them, there won’t be any surprises along the way about job performance and they may feel more inclined to do their best work.
  2. Innovation/Creativity – In a highly demanding industry like manufacturing, innovation is key to continually produce the best products and deliver on customer expectations. That creative thinking and development doesn’t always happen without a culture that encourages and nurtures thinking outside the box. Employees should understand that innovation is a daily exercise.
  3. Personal Development/Accountability – Just like employers should be held accountable for providing a stimulating work environment and opportunities for growth and advancement, employees likewise need to put their best effort forward every day to grow professionally. This accountability to grow helps both parties and ensures the best minds are producing for customers.
  4. Consistent Expectations/Fairness – High-performing cultures always establish a defined set of employee expectations and hold team members to those standards. This becomes especially important when defining standards of excellence for customer products. If employers set a high bar of quality for employees to achieve, the customer will ultimately benefit in the end.
  5. Results = Rewards – It’s equally important to reward employees when they’ve done a great job and achieved a particularly impressive result, whether internally or for a customer. There are numerous ways to show recognition, and we’ll cover how to keep employees engaged in a separate blog post. But oftentimes, even the smallest reward can make a big impact on a hard-working employee.
  6. Commitment – Employers can train their team members on soft skills like how to operate a machine, but hard skills that can’t be taught are the most valuable and worthy of recognition. Commitment to a job, to professional development or to learning a new skill all are valuable traits in an employee and should be recognized regularly by employers.
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