A Simple Approach to Improving Your Culture and Employee Retention
Studies show that company culture is important. It plays a crucial role in successfully retaining staff members. When you consider that it costs 150% of the wages of the employee to replace them, it makes financial sense to improve your company culture. If you pay someone $70,000 replacing them will cost about $105,000.
It is something that cannot be done overnight. But with patience and persistence, any company can improve their company’s culture.
Define what you want your culture to be
You do need to be clear about what you want the culture of your business to be. If you have not already done so, you must define that. You will find this article helpful when deciding how you want your company to operate. It provides examples of how others are doing it.
Make sure everyone fully understands what your culture is
Once you have firmly established what your mission, vision and values are, take the time to communicate this clearly to everyone. Get each manager to sit down with their staff and explain things face to face. It is that important. Once everyone has been spoken to, things get easier, because then all you need to do is to ensure that you include a section on culture in your new employee induction process.
Provide practical examples of your culture in action
When educating employees about culture, it is important to explain how it works using examples that are relevant to them. It helps them to understand what is expected and the difference they can make by striving to play their part in improving, or maintaining, positive company culture. That is why part of the process is setting goals at a departmental and personal level that feed into the way the company should work.
If your mission is to provide outstanding service, every single person will have to play their part to make that possible. So, you will set goals to improve anything that is stopping that from happening. For example, each production line has standards to meet. As do the departments involved in feeding the raw materials needed to make that product onto the production line.
Regularly remind people of their mission
Provided company culture is properly prioritised, you will notice a substantial positive change in the way people do their job and behave. But, over a surprisingly short period, enthusiasm can wane and compliance levels fall. This is normal, it is part of human nature.
You need to keep reminding people of what you expect from them. There are many ways to do this, and you will likely have to employ several approaches. Using workplace digital signage is one of the ways to do it. The fact that anything can be displayed on these screens, at any time makes them a highly effective tool when it comes to company culture. Here are a few of the ways you could use them:
To display the mission and vision of the company in areas where the entire workforce passes through or gathers.
To target messages at the department level. For example, to flag up issues that need addressing.
Advertising events that help to improve company morale.
Letting people know how they are doing in relation to targets that have been created to improve company culture and serve customers better.
The messages can be in the form of static images, videos, or animations. This makes it easier to keep things interesting so that these screens and the message they carry get noticed and you can reach everyone.
Lead by example
Setting a good example is by far the most effective way to improve company culture and retain more staff in the process. People will respect that and respond positively.
Encourage mentoring
Regardless of how you approach things you are going to find that some get it, while others struggle. Mentoring is the best way to get over that hurdle. It is especially effective with new hires.
Stay alert
Building a strong culture requires vigilance. You need to be alert to the fact that things can easily slide back to the way they were. It is very important to keep the lines of communication open and quickly and fairly address any problematic behaviour. You must have processes in place to enable you to spot this issue early and deal with it effectively. This guide will help you to do that.
Remember why you are doing it
Creating and maintaining a good culture takes a lot of time and effort. But it is always worth doing. When your culture is good, you will serve your customers better, have happier employees and very few problems with retaining them.