Earlier this week we explained the reasons why your company’s culture affects your brand. A healthy company culture can have a very positive effect on your daily operations and the way the public views your company. Measuring the cultural health of your company is one thing, but where do you go from there. Below we’ll have a look at some ideas to improve or give your business a cultural transformation.

The first step is to ask yourself a few questions to get a sense of the “feel” you’d like your company to have:

• What attributes do you value that you want to show up in your company’s culture? Respect, acceptance, creativity, fun, etc.?
• How can you mirror you company values in its culture?
• How is information shared with employees? Are they left in the dark often?
• Do you reward employees and how? 
• Does the organization give everyone a “voice?” Are employees asked to express their ideas and opinions?

These should lead you to more questions. Consider having a brainstorming session with your employees to find the right answers for your company. Here are some ideas we came up with:

Suggestion/Thought box – Allowing individuals to anonymously share their feelings or opinions about the day to day in the office can cause a more open feeling in the company. These concerns can be mentioned in company meetings if they pertain to everyone.

Empower employees – Let your staff make decisions. Treat your staff as peers; allow them to have a say and listen to their ideas. Also be a transparent leader. Don’t just tell your employees when things are great, but also let them know tactfully when things aren’t going so well.

Flexible hours – Giving people some flexibility to get their work done demonstrates trust. Trusting them to regulate themselves will lead them to respect you more.

Dress code – Today it is uncommon that people have to wear suits and ties on a regular basis.  Allowing employees freedom to express themselves using their wardrobe is a simple technique to make them feel accepted for who they are. To take this one step further, consider themed days: silly hat day, bright clothing day, 80’s day, etc. It’s incredible how important self-expression can be.

Celebrate – Your organization is the sum of everybody in it. Celebrate your team with group activities.  For example, cater lunch for everybody, have a movie or game day, or simply throw a party. This can cause more communication in your team and promote cooperation.

For some added fun, here are a few things real companies do to better their culture:

• Spontaneous Nerf gun wars
• Painting inspirational quotes on the walls
• Hitting a loud gong when there is a success to let the whole company know
• Foosball tournaments
• Lunchtime Yoga
• Lunchtime Crafting Club
• Monday Mad Libs, whoever wishes to contribute, does, and then the completed Mad Lib is emailed to the company

Strategy is commonly at the forefront of a company’s focus. Strategy is not the only thing which makes a company prosperous. Culture also plays a huge role. The culture of your company impacts your branding, your marketing success, and daily operations, all of which have an effect on how the world sees your business. The logos of brands like Apple, Google, and Starbucks are identifiable not only because they seem to be everywhere, but also these businesses have strong cultures that shine through their employees, storefronts, and logos. These positive, strong cultures all begin within the walls of their offices.

Why Culture is so Important

Giving your employees a feeling of ownership over their jobs ensures that they feel empowered, and empowerment encourages innovative thinking. This all starts with a healthy workplace culture. If people feel invisible or stifled in their work place, they’ll do the bare minimum required of them. It’s human nature to want to feel like we are part of something and that we have some control over our lives. Don’t forget that your brand is comprised of the individuals in your company. So nurturing a positive company culture is not just the responsibility of the HR department, but of everyone, from the CEO to the janitor.

If you are not yet convinced, here are a few of the obvious advantages of encouraging a healthy culture.

• Focus – The old adage is true; two heads are better then one. When all the people in a company are dedicated to the same goal, everything runs more efficiently. This kind of focus comes with a healthy culture; the workers will value the collective goal because they feel like they are a part of it. When individuals do not feel like they are part of the team, they don’t care about the goal, and this can bring about cynicism.

• Cohesion – The basis of cohesion is strong communication between associates, whether they are dealing with successes or roadblocks. Strong communication fortifies teamwork and makes operations run more smoothly. In a workplace with an unhealthy culture, people could be nervous to provide feedback about issues that arise or may not care enough to act quickly when issues do arise.

• Motivation – A motivated workforce gets things done. That might seem apparent, but companies that do not pay attention to the health of their culture could be suffering with regards to efficiency. Being motivated to work hard is a trait that should be present in every individual in the company if the culture is healthy.

Measuring the Cultural Health of Your Company

You should assess your company’s culture a few times a year. How can you do this? First, consider how your employees are managed. It is true that a few individuals may never be happy but, in general, if the consensus is unfavorable you may start thinking about adjustments to improve the culture to help your business. Tune in soon for some tips on making your company culture more positive.

It looks as if Microsoft is ready to do its part to discourage cyber crimes. Microsoft intends to offer real-time feeds that partners can use to analyze potential cyber threats and take the proper steps to bolster their defenses against these attacks.

Microsoft currently has a process set up to take down destructive botnets. Microsoft “swallows” the botnets and lets them infect accounts that are highly controlled by Microsoft’s team. Once the botnets infect the accounts, Microsoft learns how they work and removes them as a threat.

Previously these details had not been shared, but now this data can be given to the government and private organizations, CERTs, & ISPs. Even though the quantity of attacks will likely not decrease thanks to this real-time feed, the impact of a feed like this will be amazing. The degree of damage from a cyber attack will probably be greatly lessened because IT security professionals should be able to more quickly react to a threat.

Another great result a real-time threat feed could have is an increase in overall information sharing between IT security companies. For too long IT companies have been unwilling to share threat information for the fear that it could fuel more attacks. Most experts say this an unsupported fear.  The cyber criminal “community” has already been sharing and gaining knowledge from each other.  It is only logical therefore that IT security professional share as much information as possible to fight the seemingly endless barrage of new cyber threats.

Let’s hope that security professionals soon discover that sharing information is more valuable than secrecy. And let’s hope that Microsoft’s move is a first step in this change of attitude.

The cloud can be a blessing for small business owners struggling through tough economic times. Instead of purchasing costly enterprise software, business owners can save their dollars by accessing powerful computing programs in the cloud, from high-end word processors and project-management tools to spreadsheets and Photoshop alternatives. But, the cloud isn’t perfect, particularly when it comes to security issues. Business owners need to be conscious that their documents, presentations, and marketing materials can be damaged when they’re stored in the cloud.

Password issues

The biggest security issue that company owners face with regards to cloud computing happens to also be the biggest security issue that users also face with regards to computing: passwords which are either too simple to guess or shared too freely.

Selecting a difficult to guess password for data and information in the cloud is a simple way for business owners to protect themselves. Creating a password that has both numbers and letters, and if possible, special characters. Another consideration for business owners is who should have access to these passwords. The more people that have access to passwords the more vulnerable the data is.

Hacker alert

A few serious issues that will not soon go away for everyone who uses a computer are hackers, malware, and spyware. As business owners have little control over how secure the cloud is this part of security can be very scary indeed. Businesses like Microsoft and Google must create their own security measures to safeguard the data stored in the cloud.

Common sense protection

As with all computing, companies can protect themselves from the loss or theft of data with some common-sense practices.

First, owners should consider what type of information they’re storing in the cloud. The most sensitive data, data that could damage a company if it is lost or stolen, might not be suitable for cloud storage. Instead, this data might be better preserved on a business owner’s individual computing system and reliably backed up.

Secondly, business owners must stay cautious about who they grant access to their cloud-stored data, documents, and reports. Owners are careful about whom they allow to access the files on their desktops and laptops and they should be equally careful when it comes to granting others access to their cloud-hosted information.

The advantages of cloud computing are apparent. Not only can you free up needed space on your servers and computers, you can backup priceless data and easily share it within your company. But when considering data sharing and storage for your business, you may have some questions regarding cloud security, specially if your business requires you to protect consumer data in a manner that is compliant with HIPAA, PCI or Sarbanes-Oxley regulations.

Do cloud storage solutions adhere to these regulations? Are they required to? If they haven’t spelled it out in their privacy policies, it is safest to assume they are not compliant. We will explore this more below.

Compliance

Security has long been an important issue and as increasingly more companies utilize the cloud for storage solutions the question arises: How secure is the cloud? Storing information in the cloud can be quite economical, yet the cost for improperly handling customer data can be extremely high. If your organization needs to comply with regulations like HIPAA, your main concern is what regulations do cloud services abide by.

Who is responsible

Cloud security is vital when handling your sensitive data, but whose responsibility is it? Should you assume that if it is not explained in the privacy policy, that a service provider doesn’t follow these regulations? Even though this is clearly the safest option, it may leave you unable to use cloud computing at all. Many services don’t provide detailed information in their privacy rules, presumably to reduce their liability. The hope is that over time cloud storage and sharing will become better self-regulated and companies will elect to disclose their individual practices to the businesses they serve. While such self-regulation is not required currently, many businesses think it is their duty to display clear warnings, outlining what they don’t provide or guarantee.

Ultimately, as there is no current law that states that companies must reveal how tight their security is, the responsibility is in your hands. You have to weigh the pros and cons of cloud storage to decide if it’s suitable for your business.