If you’re a startup, creating a thriving corporate culture is essential to keeping your employees happy and retaining them for the long haul. But what does that mean exactly? And how can you go about implementing it?
This article will discuss the recent wave of American employee turnover, the importance of corporate culture, how to create a sense of belonging for your distributed team, and how to provide professional development opportunities.
We’ll also discuss the benefits of an inclusive culture for distributed teams and how you can measure employee satisfaction through metrics. By the end of this publication, you should have a practical understanding of the benefits of positive corporate culture and the dangers of employee turnover.
The State of the American Job Market
The State of the American Job Market is volatile as Covid-19 caused a significant wave in job turnover. Voluntary turnover (individuals quitting their jobs) saw an unprecedented increase, with over 25% of employees leaving their positions in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Industries with the highest turnover rates include information, construction, and transportation. The average corporate turnover rate has increased 88% since 2010. The increase is due to a period of corporate cultural awakening.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, in April of 2021, 4 million Americans had voluntarily left their jobs searching for brighter opportunities. Fleeing employees is a direct result of an increasingly turbulent U.S. economy which has forced companies to look for new methods of maintaining long-term employees.
Companies have seen a dramatic shift in internal budgeting, allocating more for corporate culture development, professional development opportunities, and benefits. Most employers are providing an increasingly competitive benefits package to reduce turnover and increase employee satisfaction.
How the Current Market Affects Startups
Moving forward, startups will need to be more focused on providing a sense of community for their employees and keeping them happy. The Millennial workforce is looking for more than just a job; they’re looking for experience.
If you’re a startup, you need to be courting employees in the right way or risk losing them to another company that can. Distributed teams are more common than ever before, so creating a sense of family for your employees is crucial.
What Can Startups do?
Startups should react to this data by further refining and developing their corporate culture. However, the best way to do this is not simply to throw money at the problem. Sure, a competitive benefits package can go a long way in reducing turnover, but it can’t solve every issue.
To create a sense of belonging for your team, you need to provide developmental opportunities and promote positive company culture. Developing an inclusive culture goes beyond creating ping pong tables or lending out bicycles; you need to get involved with your employees!
You should be attending company meetings, hangouts on Slack, and going out together after work. Developing a sense of community for distributed teams will help build employee morale and drive productivity.
How Can Startups Help Larger Companies with this Problem?
Many startups have focused on solving the employee retention crisis of late. Some of these companies have taken social development and seminar training to build a better culture. In contrast, others have implemented data-driven software to monitor and measure key performance indicators in employee turnover.
If you’re a startup, partnering with companies in your industry might be the answer for growth. By working with larger corporations to solve this problem, you drive your company’s name out there, get the attention of potential employees, and solidify a relationship with a potentially significant customer.
Some examples of startups in the corporate culture space:
- WIRL is a startup focused on creating a healthy environment for
employees to work in. They provide mental health services to corporations to combat
mental illness and burnout. - Dreamfully by Matt Riback is a mindfulness service focused on breathing
and empowering employees to manage stress. - Clout.one is a company focused on building productivity suites for small and medium companies – this ensures they have all productive tools in one place, nicely integrated, and customizable based on their needs.
What is Corporate Culture?
Corporate or company culture typically refers to the values that your organization as a whole holds. Websters defines company culture as; “The set of shared attitudes, values and beliefs that develops in a company or organization and that helps to determine the way people behave within it.”
Developing an influential corporate culture can help employees feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, which ultimately makes them more likely to be engaged in their work.
A thriving corporate culture can also play a role in reducing turnover rates (and associated costs). Employers who focus on creating a positive work environment tend to achieve higher levels of employee engagement & retention compared with those who don’t prioritize workplace happiness.
According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace Report, only 1/3 of American employees are actively engaged in their work. A positive corporate culture with a shared set of values and behaviors that guide your company’s decision-making process allows all involved parties to feel included. If developed effectively, corporate culture becomes a sense of belonging for employees.
How to Develop an Inclusive Culture for Distributed Teams
To develop an inclusive culture for distributed teams, you should focus on building a community. It’s best to create a sense of family within your startup; this may even be the reason you started your business in the first place. Provide employees with a support system, so they feel valued and appreciated, and consider adding family-oriented components to your company culture.
For distributed teams, all employees must have a say in the direction of your organization. Developing a company culture that fosters collaboration is essential for distributed startups. By encouraging open communication, distributed teams can build better relationships, building a more sustainable company.
Sharing common interests and passions is another way that remote teams can strengthen their connection with one another. Whether it’s a company softball team or a book club, encourage employees to participate in activities outside of work. Distributed teams need to have a space to share values (and enjoy themselves) outside of work.
The Benefits of Investing in Your Corporate Culture
There are many benefits of investing in your corporate culture and creating a great deal of impact with little capital regarding employee satisfaction.
- One of the most notable benefits is increased employee productivity. It’s proven that companies with a strong culture have more productive workers when compared to those who don’t.
- Developing a strong culture that engages employees can also increase customer satisfaction. Customers who have good experiences are more likely to share positive reviews and recommend your business to others. Positive company culture will ultimately improve your company’s bottom line as well.
- By promoting inclusion, you can help to foster creativity within your organization. Developing a strong culture that allows employees to feel trusted and supported is crucial to expressing their creative ideas. Being open to new ideas and suggestions is a great way to spark innovation within your organization.
- Developing a solid corporate culture that fosters collaboration and positivity among employees also lowers turnover rates, great for both employers and employees.
- Maintaining a positive culture requires leaders dedicated to fostering collaboration, transparency, and creativity (which can be challenging when running a business with limited resources).
- Standardizing a shared set of values and behaviors can help unify your team while promoting creativity and innovation.
Maintaining positive company culture is not always easy, but it is definitely worth the effort. Your employees, brand image, and customers will thank you for it.
Create a Sense of Belonging
Creating a sense of belonging is one of the most important ways to keep employee retention rates high and turnover rates low.
Companies like Snapchat and Google found that by providing their employees with an environment where they felt comfortable being themselves, they could increase productivity and innovation. Apple is statistically the king of corporate culture due to top-notch benefits, parties, innovation, pay raises, and perks.
Apple is one of the most employee-friendly employers causing businesses to follow and emulate their culture. Employees want to work for companies that value them, celebrate their successes, and make them excited to come to work each day.
Creating a culture of belonging is tough, and we aren’t saying you need to spend a billion dollars on a workplace “campus” like Apple. Still, if you try and implement some of these tips, you’ll have happy employees who work hard and don’t want to leave for another company.
Providing Professional Development
Professional Development Opportunities and allowing upward mobility for your employees are essential to feeling valued and needed. Employee satisfaction has been linked to their feeling of being adequately trained by their employer.
According to a study by Texas A&M., Developing an employee’s talent and skills is one of the best ways to keep them satisfied and happy with their job as it provides a sense of purpose. Skill development isn’t as easy as just giving the employees access to the resources they need, but providing opportunities to grow within their role or switch into another more suited to their goals will make employees feel valued.
Providing Benefits and Perks
Employee retention has been linked to employers’ perks, including benefits, paid time-off, and bonuses. The benefits an employer offers say a lot about its values and how much it cares for its employees. Large companies know this, so they often spend large sums of money on fun team-building experiences or other activities to show their employees how much they care about them individually.
Google is known for its famous TGIF meetings where the CEO would talk with all employees via hangouts to boost morale across campuses worldwide. It might seem expensive to do things like this, but research shows that spending money on employees increases productivity, innovation, and employee retention.
Fostering a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Creating a culture of belonging isn’t only about how you treat employees during regular working hours but also about how they feel when they leave home each day. A company that has put in the extra effort to ensure their employees have a healthy work-life balance will see great results across the board, including happier employees, better productivity, and lower turnover rates.
Creating this environment is difficult if your company is based around crunch time or 24/7 support. Still, you should try your best to ensure everyone gets weekends off or at least some personal days, even if it means letting someone go who isn’t suitable for that position.
Many companies offer strategic partnership deals with gyms for their employees to attend for discounted rates or even personal trainers and other health-related benefits to keep their employees healthy. A company that cares about the health of its employees will experience better retention rates and happier workers.
Measuring Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is something that can frequently be hard to measure. However, you can use some metrics and software to see if your employees like working for you or not. Retention
software like Retrium allows you to measure employee satisfaction through an app that periodically sends out surveys to employees. The end result is seeing how your employees think about their workplace and whether or not you need to make any changes.
Other metrics like employee turnover allow you to measure the rate of employees leaving your company. If you notice a high number of people going, it might be time to ask your employees for their thoughts on the company’s direction. Perhaps they feel there is no room for growth or advancement, which can lead them to look elsewhere.
Asking questions like this allows you to measure employee satisfaction without a survey system because if they aren’t happy, why would they stay?
The KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) for measuring employee satisfaction include:
- Employee retention rate (or turnover)
- Number of promotions and career advancement opportunities offered to employees
- Frequency and amount of perks and benefits given to employees
- Voluntary employee turnover rate (Fired vs. Quit)
- Retention software metrics for collecting data on employee satisfaction
- Positive employee satisfaction surveys
- Organizational and individual productivity rates
- Organizational diversity
If you track these metrics, you should notice patterns that might indicate moral or cultural issues in your company.
Why does it Matter?
If the turnover rate of your corporation is increasing, it means that there are people who are unhappy with their work or pay or something else that has occurred in the workplace. You want to watch what causes the turnover rates to increase to determine if something is wrong. It’s possible that your employees are just growing tired of crunch time and need a break, so you could also look at productivity metrics for these types of trends. If you have too much employee turnover, your company culture isn’t doing well, so try to pinpoint what is turning people away from working.
When reducing employee retention rates, start by looking at your metrics. Do you have a low turnover? If so, are people leaving because they’ve been there for years and are now ready to move on? If that’s not the case, then it might be time to look at all of the benefits you offer employees, including pay, vacation days, sick days, and even if they can work from home. If these packages you offer aren’t enough to keep employees around, then look at improving corporate culture through perks like gym memberships or company events.
Viewing metrics is a great way to keep an eye on your business, especially with employee retention rates. Tracking this information over time lets you see what is most effective in keeping employees happy with their jobs, so the more you develop the corporate culture, you’ll find that employee retention will go up.
No matter what type of business you have, looking at company metrics is a great way to track how many people find your business valuable enough to stick around. If the statistics show that most people only last one year, it’s time for a change to keep employees around longer.
Reduce employee turnover and build your culture the right way.
If you don’t make changes soon, it might be time to reevaluate your business and see a better fit for your corporate culture. By taking note of the topics discussed in the article, you can learn how to measure employee satisfaction to track the positive and negative trends in your company.
If you want to increase your profitability and grow your company, you must maintain a high retention rate. MAccelerator is an excellent resource for doing as we help companies build a better workplace through engaging training, innovative ideas, and much more. Let us help you develop and refine your workplace culture.
Visit M Accelerator Website to learn more.
