Most of our productive time is spent in our workplace, so it becomes necessary for us to have a
pleasant work environment to accomplish our tasks with the best possible attitude.
When we talk about work environment, we mean the perception that employees have about their
workplace, the style for decision-making, the model of interpersonal relationships between
employees (bosses and colleagues), informal communication, among others. The work environment
is something like the atmosphere within the company or “what is breathed in it” and has to do with
the set of favorable and unfavorable feelings and emotions that employees feel valued for their
work.
This favorable working environment or working climate is the visible part of the iceberg, of which
the invisible part is formed by the supposed shared subconscious that constitutes the organizational
culture, which is managed to achieve the commitment of staff in obtaining the expected results
through the necessary transformations or organizational change.
The objective of the processes of culture, climate and organizational change is to build a favorable
working environment for the integration of the efforts of the people who make up the institution, in
order to achieve specific objectives. Through resource management it is possible to identify the needs of the organization and establish accompanying strategies, aligned with institutional
philosophy and the latest human management trends.
All the elements that make up culture, climate and organizational change are developed within a
leadership framework, typical of each organization, which determines the style, level of performance
and underlying assumptions associated with the means necessary for the scope of organizational
objectives.
For this reason, leadership is the element that sets the course, time, and form of direction of the
organization, as the behavior of leaders determines how individuals and work teams proceed. This
leadership is definitely influenced by the invisible elements of the iceberg that mark the
organization’s thought models and leadership style. For example, if the type of culture in the
organization tends to develop a sense of family and loyalty, the perceived working climate will be
protection and paternalism.
To modify the context in which the interactions through which the working climate is built, it is
necessary to establish strategies, such as:
- Changes in beliefs and values, through the formation and creation of participation groups.
- Changing behavior patterns, establishing new reward systems.
- Personnel changes, because integrating new people will come to the organization, new ideas
- that can generate changes of values and dominant beliefs.
- Internal locations that can lead to new learnings and experiences that will bring about
- changes in organizational values.
In this way, managing healthy work environments through the empowerment of the leaders and
staff in their care, providing them with tools and resources of self-management, becomes a day-to-
day task and is no longer a timely intervention to solve certain situations.