An ever-changing workplace environment, coupled with the effects of COVID-19, leaves companies with positions to fill and a shortage of qualified candidates. In 2021, more than 47 million Americans had quit their jobs, which was a record for the most resignations in history. The majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 stated that low pay (63%), no opportunities for advancement within their company (63%), and feeling disrespected at work (57%) were the main reasons they quit their jobs.
The pandemic quickly changed how Americans view the workplace and their expectations of it. As COVID-19 rates are on the decline, offices are starting to enforce employees returning to work in the office as opposed to working remotely. So, how can you make your workplace somewhere employees actually want to come to? Continue reading to see how you can enhance your company culture.
Evaluate Your Current Company Culture
The most important step to enhancing your company culture is to evaluate the current state of it. Consider how your employees are working together, the employee engagement, arrival, and departure of your employees, etc. Interview employees or conduct surveys to gather additional information. Once you take all those factors and review them, you need to determine what’s missing in your culture. The most crucial step in this process is actually taking action to improve on the areas needed. This is a long process, but ultimately worthwhile.
Core Values
Core values shape your company culture and impact your overall business strategy. They provide your organization with a shared sense of purpose for achieving common goals. Your core values define how your team operates, behaves, and interacts during day-to-day activities. Once you’ve defined your values, ingraining them into the workplace is the challenging part. You must implement accountability mechanisms so your values can be easily united into a performance management system. Taking the time to recognize employees who have positively demonstrated your company values is a simple way to ensure your employees feel engaged and rewarded.
Conduct Performance Reviews
Providing constructive feedback is vital to your employees’ ongoing development. The feedback you offer them clarifies expectations, helps people learn from their mistakes, and builds confidence. When things are going well, it can be easy to provide feedback. However, providing negative feedback isn’t as simple. The problem compounds if it isn’t addressed right away, meaning you’ll find yourself dealing with a much bigger issue later. If employees choose to leave your company, be sure to take advantage of an exit interview. This allows for your team to receive constructive criticism from former employees as to why they’re leaving and what improvements they may have for your company.
Encourage Growth
It’s important now more than ever to retain your employees. If you’re looking for a new position to fill, consider promoting current employees before looking externally. Making sure your current employees are given opportunities for growth is one of the best ways to keep them. Consider offering personal development programs, attending conferences with your employees, conducting skills assessments, and creating formal opportunities to try out new responsibilities.
In today’s job market, you must ensure that you’re investing in your employees. By providing detailed career paths, you will do just that and attract talented employees. Candidates will be more interested and engaged from the very beginning of their career if they see a detailed path laid out in front of them showing the options for movement and growth within your company. According to SHRM, only 29% of employees were satisfied with the career advancement opportunities offered to them. These career paths ultimately help your employees envision a long-term career within your business.
Employee Engagement
Enhancing employee engagement is the simplest way to decrease employee turnover, boost productivity, increase safety, and improve the employer brand. Organizations rely on the energy, commitment, and engagement within their workforce to succeed. You must involve engagement from the entire leadership team and a lot of planning in this step. Consider volunteering as a team and have other team outings. Participating in team-building activities builds a stronger relationship within your organization while potentially helping your community. Participating in activities with team members provides your employees an environment where relationship building is encouraged. Use your company values to aid in the decision of what activities your organization participates in.
Transparency
Transparency is the practice of being open and honest with your employees. Being transparent within the workplace has many benefits. Implementing an open workplace encourages clear communication, collaboration, and an understanding of others without being afraid to speak up. Your employees want to feel supported and valued. Add transparency to your company policy to ensure all employees follow and respect the order to practice honesty. Ensure you are leading by example when encouraging transparency with your team. You need to be the first to set the standard. In order to enforce transparency effectively, be sure to start in the hiring process. This allows for your employees to know from the very beginning about your culture and policies that must be followed in the workplace.
Incentives
It is a common practice for business owners and managers to find effective ways to help keep their employees motivated and engaged. Offering incentives to your employees motivates them and drives behaviors that ultimately result in improved business outcomes. Incentives also create a culture of high performance and retain top performers. Common incentives can include schedule flexibility, home-office days, stock options, team retreats, and tuition reimbursement. Implementing employee incentives comes with many advantages which include improved sales, boosting the morale of your team, and reducing employee turnover.
Recognize Employees
Recognizing your employees for a job well done helps employees see that their company values them and their contributions to the success of their team and the company overall. When recognizing employees, be sure you’re tying it to a specific accomplishment or business objective which encourages continued strong performance. However, a simple “great work” goes a long way for some employees to keep motivated. You don’t know how your employees like to be rewarded, so make sure you ask.
Embrace Technology
Technology has become an essential part of our day-to-day lives in the workplace. Implementing technology allows your company to be more competitive, enhances communication and collaboration, increases security, and improves productivity and efficiency. Employees must be able to understand that the workforce constantly changes, and they must be willing to adapt as well. Most organizations that are constantly changing technology platforms realize that employees quickly learn how efficient their job can become with new technology. At GMS, we provide top-notch technology to your business to help with your HR functions.
How A PEO Can Help Enhance Company Culture
As an ever-tightening labor market is still relevant, recruiting employees, retention, and enhancing company culture has never been more challenging for businesses. However, GMS can offer your small to mid-sized company guidance on hiring and training, as well as assist in managing the administrative burdens associated with every aspect of the employee life cycle. Our team of experts works diligently with you to provide benefits to attract top-tier employees. We assist in recruiting top talent and providing access to cutting-edge technology including GMS Connect, Time Clock, expense reporting, and our learning management system. Having been named a Top Workplace for over six years, we understand how important creating a strong company culture is. Contact us today to learn how we can assist your business.