If you want to drive up productivity and retain your most valued members of staff, then it’s vital that you take the culture in your workplace seriously. Where workers are forced to endure a negative, oppressive environment, it’s only natural that they’ll seek work elsewhere.
Let’s take a look at a few strategies for businesses that seek to cultivate a more positive work environment.
Establishing Clear Company Values
Everyone in your business should ideally understand the ethos and values of your business. This means that those values should be explicitly defined, and difficult to miss. When you reiterate those values at every opportunity, it can inform decisions throughout the business, and lessen the need for micromanagement. A junior branch manager, if they understand the values of a business, might have an idea of what the CEO might do when faced with a certain set of challenges.
The right HR system can be helpful, here, since it can record performance reviews for members of staff, who can be judged against the values you’ve established. For example, if you want to run a green company that minimises waste, recording performance when it comes to waste reduction can be hugely helpful.
Fostering Open Communication
It isn’t enough for you to simply project your values out to all of your employees, however. Employees might also have messages that they wish to relay in the other direction. When employees feel that they’re being listened to, and their observations are being taken seriously, they’re more likely to stay with the company.
Think about implementing a system of feedback and review. Encourage employees to speak up with the help of team-building sessions, open-door policies, and safe spaces where even critical feedback can be offered without fear.
Promoting Work-Life Balance
When it comes to long-term productivity, workers should feel a healthy separation between their working life and their home life. Flexible working culture, and the legal protections that have arisen along with it, means that many employees might demand to work from home at certain times. If you can accommodate those wishes, it’s probably worth doing so.
Investing in Employee Development
Employees shouldn’t feel like they’re in a dead-end job. If there’s an opportunity for personal development, growth and new skills, then this can help to improve morale for everyone. You can offer training to workers, hold meetings with them to discuss their trajectory, and make sure that internal candidates are at least considered when a more senior position arises.
When recognised employees are promoted, it can send a broader message to the rest of the workforce – that hard work will be rewarded. This in turn can help to bolster staff retention.
