Three Tips to Create a Team Culture

Making your employees feel like they’re part of a team is an incredibly important part of running any business smoothly. Building a team culture and encouraging employees to work together has many benefits. These benefits include, but are not limited to:

• Better problem solving
• Greater productivity
• More efficient use of resources
• Encouraging employees to learn from each other

Ensure your employees are engaged and active, both in training and in day-to-day responsibilities. Additionally, there are specific things you can do to include everyone in your business team and culture.

#1: Make teamwork one of your core company values.

If working as a team is vital to your mission statement it needs to emphasized during recruitment. Your company values should agree with your employees’ values to avoid butting heads. When everyone from management to entry-level employees work together, the team and the culture will form organically. Newcomers will become empowered to find their own place on the team and work together to reach goals.

#2: Cross-train your employees.

It’s easy for employees to fall into the mindset that their particular area or role is the most important in the company, or requires the biggest skill set. Giving employees the opportunity to learn other skills and experience what other sectors of your business do can help give them a better appreciation for the rest of the company. When the budtenders know what the growers are doing and vice versa, communication is more open and they can better make decisions that will benefit the company as a whole.

Introductory courses, like Introduction to Cannabis Growing or Cannabis Industry Overview are quick online courses. These are great for cross training dispensary workers on the cultivation side and vise versa. Not only do your customers and patents receive a more comprehensive experience at your business, but cultivators often adapt their processes and timelines to what’s having the biggest impact at the customer-facing part of the business. Opening the lines of communication between these two departments fosters a unified culture and acknowledges each division for their contributions.

#3: Model and support teamwork in the leadership team.

There’s nothing more important than for employees to see their supervisors and leaders exemplifying the values that you’re trying to encourage in their work. Managers should maintain teamwork amongst themselves and the employees they oversee. They should also seek out other opportunities to encourage others within the company to create and work within teams. Make sure that employees who exemplify what teamwork and a team culture means to you and your business are the ones who are getting promotions, raises, or public praise. The more you can focus on teamwork as one of the qualities that helps provide advancement opportunities, the more employees are likely to jump on board and help you create an excellent team culture.