What Makes a Great Work Culture?

At the Lewis Group of Companies, we put a lot of thought into fostering a great work culture. You want a job where the work matters. Where you can be part of a stable, growing team, make an impact in your local community and feel like family—all while learning new skills and embracing dynamic training.

That’s the Lewis culture. We work hard, we’re a team, and we’re always striving to get better for our residents, customers, community and employees. Many employees find themselves unhappy with the standard corporate culture and we don’t blame them. That’s why we try to be different.

Having a great work culture means seeing the value and humanity of individual employees. Here are a few ways we practice a positive work culture in our day-to-day work lives.

Fostering a Great Work Culture

There are several signs of a great work culture, including:

1. Promotion From Within

At the Lewis Group, we make an effort to promote from within as much as possible. We’d argue it’s almost impossible to foster good work values if employees feel you’ll ignore their efforts and hire externally regularly, especially for management roles.

Many companies have an issue where they fail to promote from within. This can be a problem because it discourages hard work, collaboration and can deliver a serious hit to morale, especially when a good employee is wondering, “What’s next for my career?”

Workers know a company inside and out. Over time, they learn its business model, the wants and needs of various clients, and more. This is one of the many invaluable reasons to promote from within. And in a tight talent market, growing your people from within makes good business sense.

Combined with our next tip, this policy really starts to shine.

2. Train People for Growth

If you want to know what makes a good work culture, upward culture should invariably top the list. This is why companies need to train their employees for growth.

We already talked about our feelings regarding promotion from within but there is another side to upward mobility too. Employees need to be trained with the assumption that they will do better, and greater things over time.

At the Lewis Group, we train employees to improve and fill bigger roles, making our workforce more efficient and more adaptable. While it is easier in the short term to train workers for the bare minimum their role requires, it is also short-sighted.

It is easy to underestimate the latent potential of a given employee. Many companies look at an employee’s resume and experience and think that’s all there is. However, dynamic training can bring out so much more if you assume the employee has room to grow and flourish.

3. Maintain Company Stability

When discussing positive work culture examples, it would be a disservice not to mention stability. Stability is essential to a healthy work environment and long-term retention of your team. This is especially true during times of national stress, such as a financial crisis or the ongoing COVID pandemic.

One of the biggest concerns most employees have is, “How stable is the Company I work for?” Good employees are always thinking about not just the future of their particular job, but about the foundation of the entire company. They wonder if there is a possibility of being laid off or furloughed. After all, Corporations can sometimes make sweeping changes that gut whole teams, departments or even move offices states away.

This is damaging to worker trust. That’s why our business makes an effort to keep workers informed and avoids making radical changes that may impact them unless necessary. The Lewis Group of Companies prides itself on being a very financially sound company with decades of valued stability and a solid reputation for long-term thinking.

4. Develop a Family Culture

At the Lewis Group of Companies, we value a workforce that can view each other as family. We have a whole department dedicated to events meant to foster kinship between employees and help everyone stay connected.

We believe a safe work environment requires trust. If you do not know your coworkers, it is difficult to trust them and build relationships. In a similar vein, we believe every workplace rule and regulation needs to have a purpose. If a policy is going to impact workers, there should be a justifiable explanation for it.

As a family-owned business, we want to make it clear that we care. This is not only on a superficial level either; we put immense value on workers being able to trust each other and communicate without judgment.

5. Give Back

As a company grows, it begins to have the ability to make substantial positive changes in the world. Charitable donations help show that a company wants to use its power for good. The more it gives, the more likely that charity isn’t a publicity stunt.

It’s for this reason that our company makes a real effort to give back to the communities that support us and donate to worthy causes. Our success is a group effort so it is only fair we do our part.

In a similar vein, a good work environment is kind internally, too. Large corporations can forget that workers are human beings. That’s why we work incredibly hard to treat every employee with the respect they deserve.

6. Employ Locally

At Lewis, we hire locally and engage in local projects. Much like with our charity efforts, we think this helps reciprocate the kindness and generosity our company has benefitted from over the years.

Many employers have a bad habit of shopping around both nationally and internationally, looking for where they can hire at the cheapest possible cost. We prefer a different approach, by planting roots in the communities where we do business, with projects and careers that think long-term.

While a business may have to profit to succeed, it doesn’t have to be a drain on the communities it touches. We think the best work culture one can hope for is one where employees and local members of the community feel seen and cared for.

See Everyone’s Humanity

In essence, a great work culture is one that sees the humanity in a business’s employees and the communities that the business works in. People deserve respect, especially if they’re helping you succeed.

We have seen immense success, all while doing our best to help our employees succeed with us. If you would like to join our team, check out our hiring process and then apply for the careers that interest you!