Words To Describe Your Work Environment

The ability to describe company culture is important. It can help you define and identify the workplace qualities that are essential for employee job satisfaction, motivation, and productivity. It can also help you make decisions regarding the people you hire and the way you navigate interactions with others in business and public sectors. Often, a company’s culture is implied and felt, but not explicitly articulated. Describing the culture of your workplace can be challenging if you’ve never done it before, so here are a few steps to help you get started. 

Learn more: What Aspects of Company Culture Matter Most in Today’s Job Economy

1. Consider and brainstorm your company’s core values

Company values should be the force driving your work environment. They should determine how your clients and employees are treated and how you conduct business. These values should also set the tone for work style and vibe in the office. For example, if your company relies heavily on creative thinking and innovation, your work environment should encourage communication and collaboration. 

While you might come up with a long list of core values, once you have them written down, narrow the list until you have only a few left. Three is easier than 20 to instill into your brand’s identity.  

2. Integrate your mission statement

Alongside core values, your company’s goals, target audience, and how you’d like to impact your community and society should play significant roles in defining your workplace culture. If one of the company goals is to be on the front lines of cutting-edge technology, you’ll want to nurture an environment that rewards out-of-the-box thinking and risk-taking. Your mission statement should reinforce your core values and add to the company’s impetus. 

3. Include your current employees

Your work environment is a living force. Regardless of whether you wish to make changes to your company culture, how your employees interact with each other, receive feedback, and stay motivated drives the culture you have now. Think about what makes your team unique, and use honest language to illustrate these qualities as though you’re appealing to prospective applicants. Describe the environment you’ve created accurately — no one likes false advertisement, and employees who aren’t satisfied with their company culture are almost 25% more likely to look for a new job within a year.

Looking for a new job? Start here.

Once you’ve written down your values, mission statement, and what makes your company dynamic special, it’s important to find keywords that adequately represent the current work environment. Below are some commonly used words to describe a company’s culture: 

Transparent

Transparency in the workplace refers to open and honest communication — a culture in which information flows freely between and among individuals and teams. This can present as managers or executives sharing information with the entire team, individuals sharing information with one another, or feedback flowing in all directions within an organization. It can also look like open dialogue about company performance and plans, peer evaluations, and collaboration between departments. 

Autonomous 

Autonomy in the workplace refers to how much freedom employees have to do their jobs. Depending on the job or industry, this can encompass everything from employees setting their own schedules to deciding how to perform their tasks. Whichever concept a company implements, higher levels of autonomy can lead to increased job satisfaction and productivity. This doesn’t mean the company has no structure or oversight — ideally, employees receive assignments, deadlines, and benchmarks but are allowed to employ their own talents to get things done. 

However, this balance can be a delicate one. The culture of a company determines whether autonomy will be successful, yet employees’ level of autonomy can play a huge role in defining an organization’s culture. 

Inclusive

Inclusion is a hot topic in human resources and recruitment departments, and rightfully so. One of the biggest challenges many companies face is cultivating diverse and inclusive work environments. While diversity and inclusion are interconnected concepts, they aren’t interchangeable. While diversity refers specifically to representation, or the makeup of an organization, inclusion refers to how well individuals from different groups integrate and feel valued in that environment. 

An inclusive work environment is one in which everyone, regardless of who they are, what they look like, how they identify, how able they are, or what they do for the company feels equally involved, safe, and supported in all areas of the workplace. 

Challenging

Challenging work can be a strong motivator that keeps employees interested and engaged in their roles. Many people prefer being nudged outside of their comfort zones and overcoming minor difficulties over monotonous, mindless work. Of course, this only applies to a certain degree of challenge. Work should never become so challenging that it feels unattainable or that employees feel like they lack the appropriate skills to get their job done. This can very quickly have the opposite effect, negatively impacting morale and motivation. 

Collaborative  

Collaboration refers to individuals working together to make amalgamated decisions. This applies to team members or colleagues working together or employees and employers communicating openly and can happen in a variety of settings. Whether remote or on-site, teamwork empowers employees to work more efficiently and effectively and promotes healthy employee relationships. Employing a collaborative work model helps spur creativity and increases employee job satisfaction and productivity. When people work together, individuals have the opportunity to learn from one another and increase their skill sets faster. 

Progressive

A progressive culture is often defined as one that encompasses many of the attributes mentioned above. It’s collaborative, inclusive, and transparent. A progressive company tends to do things differently than traditional organizations, such as letting employees work from home, painting the walls to inspire creativity, implementing autonomy, using the latest marketing tools, and adopting consistent, standout branding. One of the most important, commonly found characteristics of a progressive organization is open communication, or transparency.  

Nurturing

A nurturing work environment is all about employees having the space and encouragement they need to grow and prosper within an organization. When employees fully understand how their roles fit into the company’s goals and strategies and receive proper training and coaching through challenges, productivity and job satisfaction increase. You can implement a nurturing work environment by allowing employees to have a voice, recognizing and rewarding efforts and good performance, coaching and mentoring, and incorporating the above-mentioned concepts to optimize how valued employees feel. 

Passionate

When most people see a work environment described as passionate, they think of employees who are driven, intrinsically motivated by the work they do, and eager to do well in their roles both for their own satisfaction and the company’s success. A passionate work environment is engaging, inspiring, and contagious. 

Flexible

Flexibility in the workplace can mean different things to different people and companies. Regardless of how an individual defines workplace flexibility, it promotes a healthy work-life balance, and four out of five employees are looking for it. Examples of workplace flexibility include the ability to work remotely, giving employees every third Friday off, offering on-site day care, or allowing employees to dictate their own hours as long as their work gets done on time. Of course, these things won’t be possible or practical in all fields or departments, so an organization needs to determine what works best for their team. 

In addition to promoting a healthy company culture, workplace flexibility can offer business-related benefits such as cutting costs from office locations by having employees work remotely part time. 

Casual

A casual work environment goes beyond dress codes. That said, allowing employees to show up to work in clothes they like and are comfortable in is a valuable characteristic, especially among millennials and Gen Zers. When used to describe a company’s culture, the word casual can present in many ways — coworking spaces, outdoor work spaces, collaboration among teams, flexible work schedules, autonomy, etc. Circling back to dress codes, a casual one can have a huge impact on a workforce. Formal dress codes can put unnecessary financial strain on employees, while more relaxed policies promote self-expression and boost morale. 

Keep in mind that a company’s culture or work environment reflects the values and mission of an organization as well as the individuals within that organization. Use these examples to accurately describe your work environment.

Tell us what your experience has been like working at your company.