Ask any small business owner what they want their workplace to feel like, and the answers are pretty consistent. They want a team that communicates well. They want people who aren’t burned out by Wednesday. They want to actually enjoy showing up, and they want their employees to feel the same way.
Then ask those same owners what a typical Tuesday looks like, and suddenly it’s a different conversation. Missed messages. Jobs falling through the cracks. Someone redoing work that was already done because nobody could find the original notes. A scheduling conflict that turned into a whole thing.
Sound familiar?
Here’s what doesn’t get said enough: work culture problems are often systems problems wearing a feelings costume.
Disorganization Is Expensive, and Not Just Financially
When an organization uses sticky notes, text messages and “tribal” (AKA “hidden”) knowledge for sharing information, that’s the type of information that only exists within one employee’s mind. It creates a form of workplace anxiety/pressure that is difficult to articulate or define, and yet is also easily recognizable by most people.
This anxiety/stress includes the fear of not knowing what is expected, the frustration of being asked the same question repeatedly (simply because there was no clear documentation of the answer to that question), and the sheer fatigue from spending too much time on tasks that could have taken less than thirty minutes.
This environment does not merely create inefficiency. It also has de-motivating effects on the individuals who are working within this culture. Employees are able to endure long hours at work; however, they also find it difficult to endure excessive amounts of wasted effort and ambiguous expectations.
As employees lose faith in the processes and systems that are surrounding them as support systems, so too do they lose confidence in their ability to be successful. This negatively impacts their level of engagement and ultimately leads to employee turnover.
The Hidden Cost of a Chaotic Workflow
Gallup’s research on employee engagement is worth paying attention to here.
Disengaged employees cost employers an estimated $3,400 for each $10,000 paid in salary (just in lost productivity). Typically, a person is not disengaged simply because they don’t care. They are typically disengaged because they care so much that they continually hit walls they did not create or cannot remove.
The technician showing up at work without all the necessary information is not necessarily a poor technician. The customer service representative booking two appointments at one time because there were three separate locations where the scheduling system existed was not intentionally irresponsible. These are good people being employed by flawed processes.
Over time, those flaws will eventually wear down even the best employees.
What Happens to Culture When Systems Actually Work
Flip the script and you get the same dramatic effect but in the opposite way. If an organization has truly implemented good management systems (the basics of CRM, defined workflow, communications automation, scheduling) the people within that organization will be relaxed. But not because they’re being idle.
Clarity is calming. When a person or team member clearly understands what’s on their agenda, which task needs to take priority, and who is responsible for each piece of the puzzle, they can then apply all of their time and energy toward the work itself as opposed to working to manage the chaos surrounding the work.
The ability to focus generates more focus. Organizations without constant fire-fighting have the capacity to really think, collaborate, and improve.
Communication Gets Better Without Anyone Trying Harder
One of the less obvious advantages of creating well-designed systems are the many improvements that you will see in your organization’s communication. It doesn’t happen as a result of everyone becoming better communicators; it occurs due to the information being available, correct and in one location.
You see, when there is only one source of information (and therefore only one version of the “truth”) for an employee to access, this eliminates the game of telephone regarding their job status.
And when the amount of time required for employees to communicate decreases, so does the amount of interpersonal friction. Interpersonal friction is often generated by phrases like “nobody told me” and “I didn’t hear that.”
As this friction reduces, so too does the level of distrust among team members. As much of a cliche as it is to say at this point, trust is the foundation upon which all organizational cultures exist.
Morale Follows Momentum
Here’s a dynamic that plays out in small businesses constantly but rarely gets named directly: morale follows momentum. When things are working, people feel good. When things feel chaotic, people feel bad. It’s not complicated, but it’s truly profound in practice.
When an organization is moving forward (and thus creating momentum) employees are happy. Conversely, when there appears to be chaos within the organization, employee happiness suffers.
Teams that operate using well-designed processes will consistently achieve tangible successes. For example, jobs will be completed in a timely manner, customer follow-up is completed quickly, schedules are organized.
These small and repetitive successes create a rhythm or flow which develops confidence. A confident team produces quality work and quality work results in quality outcomes. Quality outcomes result in improved employee morale.
Thus, the cycle continues to move in a positive direction as long as the systems supporting it are functional.
Retention Is a Systems Problem More Than a Perks Problem
There’s a tendency to throw perks at retention problems, like ping pong tables, pizza Fridays, or the occasional gift card. Those things are nice, to be sure, but they also really don’t fix a chaotic work environment.
People don’t leave companies over insufficient snack budgets. They leave because they feel set up to fail, undervalued, or burned out from constant disorganization.
According to research from MIT’s Sloan Management Review, toxic work culture is the single biggest predictor of employee attrition. It’s literally ten times more influential than compensation. And while “toxic culture” sounds dramatic, it doesn’t always mean something extreme. Sometimes it just means nobody knows what’s going on, expectations shift daily, and every week feels like starting from scratch.
Fix the systems, and a lot of what reads as culture problems starts resolving on its own.
Building a Business Where People Actually Want to Stay
Townsquare Interactive developed its Business Management Platform with the needs of these businesses in mind. The real world small business where the owner/manager is also the salesperson and possibly the one answering the phone.
The platform integrates all leads generated by an ad campaign into an organized area for the manager (and/or employee) to manage from. Automated reminders, scheduling tools and customer communication tools are now available to help eliminate many common problems that are associated with managing multiple campaigns across various markets.
Investing in better systems sends a clear message to teams. This message states something along the lines of: “Your time matters. Your effort matters. We will not ask you to perform at high levels on equipment that has no support.”
This message is received clearly by employees. When a business is willing to spend money making the work better than just less expensive or quicker, employees take note.
The Practical Takeaway
Better management systems may solve some of your challenges in the workplace but by no means will they resolve all.
However, better management systems will eliminate huge amounts of friction, which appears as many times as a culture issue or as a performance issue or conflict with someone on the team.
The next time you think the team has a morale issue, it would be good to ask if this is a systems issue because much of the time when we see employees being “dis-engaged” from work. These employees simply want to stop working so hard in an environment that is making their jobs much more difficult than they should have to be.
If you give people fair operating systems for the work, and communicate clearly about how things are going at work (as opposed to using corporate jargon), and also provide them with the tools they need to do their job well…then generally speaking, the culture of the company will follow.
And there is something uniquely human about taking the boring, day-to-day operational solution and doing it.