Reflect a Company’s Culture to Your Employees
For nearly five years in a row, Google’s corporate offices – all of them across the globe – rank as the number one best place to work. It isn’t just that their offices look like living rooms or that Ping-Pong tables line the break rooms. This billion-dollar company attracts and retains top performers because their company culture shows temporary and permanent staff that they are valued, not just as employees, but as people.
You don’t have to run a Fortune 500 company to build a nurturing and innovative workforce culture. While stress-relieving gadgets, complimentary lunches and ergonomic office chairs can impact morale, there are other elements to workplace culture. Open door policies, emphasis on work-life balance and opportunities for personal and professional growth are all great and inspiring ways to boost office culture. In order for this type of culture to be a success, business owners and managers should make sure employees, both permanent and temporary, understand and internalize these values.
Throw out the typical 9-5
Survey your employees to find out when they work best and build your shifts and schedules around their needs and wants. Don’t be chained to a structure that really works only for a few. If you allow flexibility, you’ll find your workers get excited about being more productive.
Offer better benefits
Focus on benefits that will not just make your workplace better, but your staff’s lives better. This helps to boost your staff’s work-life balance, which decreases stress and anxiety in their lives. Offer immediate packages that include bonuses, flex time, paid maternity and paternity leave, while also creating a light-hearted office culture. Be generous with vacation, giving your employees that much-needed mental and physical break, which can reenergize them about their position in the company.
Let them pursue their own projects
Give them the freedom to use a bit of company time to work on volunteer projects or implement company initiatives of their own design. Your employees may need a mid-day recharge, so give them the flexibility to relax their minds. You may find they have useful hidden talents they’d love to share – find that office yogi to lead an afternoon stretching class or let that know-it-all in accounting start a Friday afternoon trivia contest. As long as it benefits your staff, it will benefit your company.
Build a sense of community
A company that feels its employees are easily replaceable will have trouble retaining workers and the ones who stick around won’t be very motivated to do their best work. Everyone feels extra stress when the desires of the stakeholders trump the needs of those making progress on the ground. Build a sense of community by showing your employees that they are valuable assets to the company. Open your door; give them time to address their concerns with you and collaborate on projects with other departments. Give the lunch and break room an interactive overhaul, creating place where employees can connect and unwind.
You don’t have to top Google’s workforce culture in order to have an all-star office culture. Think about where you would want to work – a place with flickering florescent lights hanging above dingy beige cubicles or an office with colorful art work, partitions made with living plants and a spacious atmosphere that allows employees to be themselves?
If you’re ready to take your workplace environment to the next level, Burnett Specialists and Choice Specialists can help. We have worked with many Texas companies looking to make their workplace more appealing with creative, innovative staffing solutions. We have outstanding opportunities to help you attract the right staff, right when you need them most.Call us today!
