Having a positive company culture is essential to an organization’s success. Ultimately, human resources (HR) plays a pivotal part in the culture equation, ensuring employees are engaged, enthusiastic, and supported. Here’s a closer look at the role of HR in fostering a positive company culture.
The Role of HR in Fostering a Positive Company Culture
Communicating Core Values
HR professionals are often responsible for effectively defining and communicating an organization’s core values. While this seems like a small part of the equation, it has a major impact on a company’s culture.
Along with guiding employee actions and behaviors, informing workers of core values gives them a greater connection to the organization. Plus, it creates shared goals for the entire company. Often, this can provide employees with a sense of purpose and give even mundane duties greater meaning. In turn, job satisfaction often rises, leading to a more positive culture.
Ensuring Employees Are Recognized
In most organizations, HR is responsible for gathering feedback on employee performances and monitoring how well they’re doing when compared to company expectations. This puts HR professionals in the unique position of being able to ensure that no contributions are accidentally overlooked. They can ensure that employees who are exceeding expectations are properly recognized for their efforts.
Plus, HR departments often design recognition programs to guide the activities of managers. This helps create a broader culture of appreciation, as it gives managers a functional roadmap to follow to ensure employees feel seen and valued. By following HR’s recommendations, managers can help keep workers motivated and productive, all while improving the company’s culture.
Factoring in Culture Fit When Hiring
When HR team members assess candidates who apply for open positions, they don’t just evaluate them based on their hard skills, experience, and education. HR professionals also consider culture fit when identifying top talent.
During the process, HR can determine if prospective new hires have the traits and characteristics necessary to elevate the company’s culture. Additionally, they can check for values alignment, as stronger alignment usually leads to better morale and higher job satisfaction.
Further, HR can look beyond the company’s culture and factor in team dynamics. Ensuring candidates are the right fit for their department or workgroup increases cohesion and creates a sense of harmony, which can improve the workplace experience for everyone.
Developing Robust Onboarding Processes
Comprehensive and engaging onboarding processes set new hires up for success. During onboarding, employees receive critical information that introduces them not just to their roles but to the organization as a whole. By providing the right insights during their early days on the job, HR can generate a greater sense of connection with the employer.
Plus, robust onboarding increases the comfort level of new hires, leaving them feeling valued and prepared for the journey ahead. Typically, this leads to greater confidence, too, which keeps morale high among the newly hired. Similarly, it ensures incoming employees feel supported, and that makes a significant difference. Ultimately, all of these factors positively impact the broader company culture.
Providing Development Opportunities
HR is often responsible for creating and overseeing various training and development opportunities within an organization. For example, they may develop internal eLearning coursework, oversee mentorship or job shadowing programs, and administer educational benefits like student loan reimbursement or tuition assistance.
Since chances to grow professionally are often highly coveted by employees, these efforts on HR’s part positively impact the culture. It shows the company is willing to invest in its workforce and creates a sense of empowerment over one’s career progression. In turn, job satisfaction is usually higher, and it leads to a company culture that promotes continuous growth.
Resolving Conflict
In many cases, HR professionals act as neutral mediators when conflicts occur between employees or workers and managers. They’re able to use reliable conflict resolution techniques to identify the root cause of struggles and offer meaningful solutions that meet the needs of the individuals and organization. At times, they even help those in conflict to not just solve the problem but build stronger, more meaningful relationships with each other. When that occurs, the company’s culture is also strengthened, creating a workplace where respect and collaboration can thrive.
Administering Wellness Programs
Wellness benefits ensure that employees are holistically supported while working for the company. Often, HR is at the core of any related initiatives. The HR team may develop suitable plans, select providers for programs, and communicate the available benefits to the workforce. Since that’s the case, HR is functionally working to ensure employees have the mental, emotional, and physical well-being they need to thrive, and that contributes to a positive company culture.
Receiving Feedback
HR is typically the department that receives direct feedback from employees regarding their experience. For example, HR may issue surveys to gather insights for workers, including how they feel about their roles, managers, or the organization as a whole.
With the information HR receives, team members can create viable pathways for meaningful improvements. That allows the company to manage its culture based on genuine employee data, a strategy that often yields the best results.
Do You Need Candidates Who Can Elevate Your Company’s Culture? Burnett Specialists Can Help!
Maintaining a positive company culture is essential for success. That’s why ensuring new hires have the skills, traits, and characteristics necessary to elevate it is a critical part of the equation.
At Burnett Specialists, we understand the nuances of hiring for culture fit, allowing our team to help client companies identify top talent for their vacant positions with ease. Our recruiters spend time getting to know each client company’s unique culture, as well as learning about its culture-related goals. In turn, our team is able to find right-fit candidates quickly and efficiently.
If you need to find right-fit candidates to fill your vacant positions, the recruitment team at Burnett Specialists makes the process simple. Request more information to learn more about how our team can streamline your hiring process and help your company connect with the candidates it needs to thrive.
