Culture of support

Within a business, the most valuable asset is its employees. Proof of this is the continuous brain drain among large international companies, who are fighting fiercely to have the best people working for them. The employee is the one who produces, is the executing arm of what was once just an idea. Within a good work environment, a worker can be your partner, have innovative ideas and contribute much more value than we expected at the beginning.

It is under this idea that the term "Culture of Support" comes into play, which is widely practiced by the most important companies in the world. In this guide we will analyze what the culture of support consists of and how we can implement it in our business.

What is the culture of support?

The culture of support is a work system created to function as a team, in an environment that is conducive to innovation and personal development of employees. This concept emerges in practice as a key foundation for business development and human resource utilization. The culture of support works above all in the work environment, which must be safe for the employee, who will have license to innovate and make personal contributions with the full support of his or her bosses and work team.

The two basic fundamentals to achieve such an environment within your business are innovation and safety.

Innovation

Innovation is the quality that differentiates big companies from small ones. To stand out in a market you need to innovate. There are two ways to make your product the best seller, one is to be the best and the other is to be the first. Innovation is about being different, taking risks to be the first. We have the misconception that only the bosses or executives are the ones who have to innovate. This is a total waste of the talent of our workforce. It is assuming that just because we are the boss we will be the ones to develop something disruptive and that our workers are not capable of coming up with good ideas.

Of course, innovation requires conditions and can be costly. We must offer security and rewards if we want to stimulate this spirit in our employees.

Security and rewards

Security is key to innovation. No employee will be willing to innovate if he knows that failure could cost him his job. That is why we said that innovation is costly, since it is rarely achieved the first time. While you fail you are consuming resources, but if you are not willing to assume the failure you cannot pretend to innovate. Our employees must be fully confident that mistakes are an everyday occurrence, that the important thing is that they tried and that they must keep trying. Failures in innovation on the part of our workers must be received with praise, not with scolding, since it is necessary to be very brave to try something new.

We must also be willing to reward our employees for their achievements in innovation. Many high-impact products in the marketplace have been created by employees, not by management. These companies know how to appreciate the value of an employee who manages to innovate, which is why on many occasions, in order to retain them within their team and not end up becoming competition, they offer them management positions, shares in the company, make them partners or considerably increase their salary. The idea is that the employee knows that if he/she fails, nothing will happen, while if he/she succeeds, he/she will be able to enjoy great benefits.