Involve all employees
Employee engagement needs to be a priority. Everyone needs to engage in discussions and decision-making together. Of course, not everyone is on the same level nor does everyone have the same experience. This is why you must do your best to encourage continued personal and professional development. Including mentoring, coaching, funded training, and self-funded courses. Not only will this help everyone take an active, engaging role in the company’s decisions. But it will also help you rest assured that your employees will stay with your company for as long as possible.
According to Entrepreneur, the best way to do this is to set up a social contract. You can think of this somewhat like a playbook that explains what type of culture you want to have in your business. Here is where you define the vision you have for your company’s culture. Once you’ve written this down you have a guide on how to build your company. This will help your company grow and adapt so that you can quickly achieve the results you’re hoping for.
Healthy work culture and achieving company goals
Although this may seem unimportant now, research does show that there’s a clear correlation between a company’s culture and their bottom line. This is why it’s important that you create the type of culture you want within your business right away. Once defined you’ll receive some great results, including:
- Sustainability.
- High-performance from your employees.
- A company your employees are proud to work for.
- Instant brand differentiation.
- Improved profitability.
Some of the main values a company should emphasize within their team include personal ownership of decisions, problem-solving, and trust. These are essentially what lies behind the ride-sharing company, Lyft. They tell their employees to be themselves, create fearlessly, uplift others and make it happen. These values encourage employees to get engaged in your company.
You can’t simply focus on those employees you see every day either. It’s just as important to remember your remote employees and help remote employees stay connected through web conferencing. By communicating with them on a regular basis you’re helping them stay plugged in. If you fail to do this, they’ll start to feel isolated and disconnected from the rest of your team. Web conferencing allows for more personal conversations than email does. It offers a type of face to face chat, which is important for everyone today.
Have fun with it
Although work can’t be all fun and games, any company can tweak its corporate culture to improve morale, engagement, and community. With this in mind, The Undercover Recruiter suggests these “simple” ways to improve things in your office:
- Provide a catered lunch weekly.
- Have food trucks stop by for a visit.
- Offer well-stocked snack rooms or juice bars.
- Have an in-office happy hour at the end of the workday.
- Set up a pool table or ping-pong table and encourage brainstorming sessions to take place around them.
- Invite a masseuse into your office’s conference room on those days when you have extra stressful deadlines looming.
- Offer classes on yoga and guided meditation.
- Have a dog-friendly workplace at least once a month, if not daily.
- Send your employees outdoors to work on projects together for a few hours when it’s sunny outside.
- Host a work outing so employees can have fun while bonding over a local major league game or a game of bowling.
- Have reward programs for your outstanding employees – offer things like the ability to leave work early or take a long lunch break if your company is cash-strapped.
When you start running out of ideas, ask your employees for new ones. You can even have them create a committee that works on this so you never run out of ideas again. This really goes a long way towards improving company morale so you should never think of it as wasted time.
Get everyone’s feedback
Once you’ve implemented some of these things, you’ll want to also make sure you get everyone’s feedback. Inc. reminds us that while quarterly and annual performance reviews are really the only formalized times when we exchange feedback with employees this isn’t nearly enough. Instead, we need to make sure that every employee receives at least 15 minutes of one-on-one time each week. This allows your employees to tell you how they’re doing and give you feedback about your business while you can also save your criticism for such private times. These brief meetings also serve as a great time to defuse little issues before they spiral out of control into larger issues later.
When you’re in a group setting, it’s a great time to praise your employees – not so much with criticism though. Studies have shown that positive feedback is magnified 5 times in such settings while negative criticism is magnified 10 times. So, while it’s fine to praise someone in front of your team, it’s never fine to criticize them in such situations. This is because people like others knowing they’re doing a great job.When criticized you’re wreaking havoc on their self-esteem, preventing them from wanting to do a better job.
Sum up
By taking the time to invest in healthy work culture and each of the employees who work for you, you’re actually investing in the business itself. You’re making your current employees want to continue working for you and as word gets out that this is a great place to work you’ll also attract more talented employees as well. Of course, this will all have a very positive impact on your bottom line, which is ultimately what you want anyway.
About the author:
Peter Davidson strives to help different brands and startups to make effective business decisions and plan effective business strategies. With years of rich domain expertise, he loves to share his views on the latest technologies and applications through well-researched content pieces.
