Organizational Health
Many people consider organizational health to be one of the most important things in business. If you are not familiar with the concept, organizational health is defined as the ability of a given company or organization to function effectively, cope adequately, or adapt appropriately.
This does not refer to the physical systems that are put in place, nor does it refer to the culture of a company. Organizational health goes beyond the aforementioned elements of work and represents the ability of an organization to align around a common goal or vision, and accomplish them.
Whether you’re already an executive or a rank and file employee, knowing why good organizational health is important will be helpful in improving the quality of your working life and your company’s success.
Long-term financial success is driven by organizational health
If there is one thing that research has revealed regarding organizational health, it dictates long-term financial success. This is to say that there is a strong correlation between financial performance and health. Based on this organizational health index (IHO), companies that are at the top have the best financial performance. Another insight that can be gotten from the index is that significant improvements in performance are assured when companies start focusing on improving their organizational health.
If you want to increase your company’s profit margins and financial performance then look beyond your financial statements. Sometimes, what is holding your company back is its ability to have all its members aligned on a single goal.
Companies with good organizational health produce leaders
While not necessarily the direct outcome of having good organizational health, leaders at all levels of an organization have been observed to be present when there is good health. Leaders are important in ensuring the success of any team endeavor and without them, results become hard to deliver. This can be observed in companies that have a decentralized system wherein leaders are assigned to respective teams and departments instead of having one or two people in-charge.
When there are capable leaders with good resolve, aligning towards a single goal becomes an easier task. Employees become more effective and accountability is also enforced. Leaders ensure that a company will function as a cohesive group because they act as a bridge between their team members and the management.
As you would come to know, companies exhibiting bad organizational health are not the best at molding leaders from their pool of employees. Given their importance, companies and firms would do well to cultivate leaders and start a natural cycle of employees becoming leaders that would train the next generation of employees who would then become leaders in the future. This is a sign of good organizational health that will gear your company for success.
Good organizational health produces a united workplace
Another thing that comes with good organizational health is good communication. When employees communicate well with each other, instructions, ideas, feelings, and knowledge are shared properly. This fosters unity and comfort among team members. Employees that are comfortable in their work become more productive and contribute to lower turnover rates. Meanwhile, unity will make workers help and coordinate with each other when there is an opportunity to do so.
Transparency is also promoted in a united workplace because there is trust among team members. All of these things will contribute to a more effective business operation.
It also leads to more innovation
Innovation is becoming more and more indispensable as markets become increasingly competitive. Those who continually innovate their business practices end-up becoming more successful for a longer period of time. Organizational health often dictates the propensity of employees to come up with new ideas because of a positive feedback loop.
Put simply, when employees experience success, they are incentivized to maintain, if not transcend it because they wouldn’t want to lose the level of success they have attained and the benefits that come with it. The opposite can also happen wherein poor working experiences will lead to more problems. Pay attention to your organizational health so that you can steer your organization towards the right path.
Workplaces with bad organizational health become toxic
While knowing the effects of having good organizational health is useful, it can even be more beneficial to know what can happen when the opposite happens. If you’ve heard of the word ‘toxic’ being applied to a certain workplace, then that is a prime indicator that there is poor organizational health in that workplace.
A toxic workplace will have one or more of the following qualities:
- Low productivity
- Presence of office politics
- Proliferation of gossip and rumors
- Little-to-no transparency
- Lack of cohesive leadership
All these things will negatively affect your operations and can lead to many disastrous circumstances such as fights among team members, loss of clients, a high turnover rate, and (in the worst case) the collapse of your company. It is imperative that you avoid these problems and working on your organizational health can help you do just that.
Improve your company’s organizational health with Teamstrr!
Now that you know the importance of having good organizational health, what better way for you to improve it than by using Teamstrr!
Teamstrr is an online platform that allows employees and team members to share their thoughts digitally. As alluded to above, communication is key to maintaining an enjoyable and effective workplace. Since the current workforce will continue to become technologically oriented, Teamstrr serves as the ideal tool to facilitate effective communication between the management and its employees.
By using Teamstrr, not only will you be able to improve your company’s organizational health. You will also be able to do it in an efficient, cost-effective manner. Click here to get started!