I was thinking the other day about company culture and how if affects your work life and wellbeing.
I concluded there are two basic cultures to be concerned about in a work environment:
- People Culture: How nice and supportive are the people you work with?
- Work Culture: How well is the work organised and executed?
Both of these will have a significant affect on an employee’s wellbeing. If people are bullies wellbeing will plummet, and if the work is poorly organised frustrations will grow.
I’ve put together a little chart to highlight the four types of company these cultures produce based on a binary good / bad axis.
Obviously companies are not this simple and binary, and very few get the people and work culture perfect. But personally I feel employees need to focus on the people culture of a company when judging its quality.
It’s much easier to cope with a disorganised work environment if the people are decent and reasonable. Whereas it’s unlikely even the best executed work is going to compensate for working with arseholes.
And in my own recent experience I’ve found working at companies with decent people culture has dramatically improved my wellbeing.