I know culture has been steadily catching up to compensation as a top reason why an employee would stay at an organization (SHRM Satisfaction & Engagement Report, 2015). That makes it important to know how to foster the environment we want for our companies.
When I recently signed up for the Best Places to Work Roadshow, I was honestly expecting a two-hour sales pitch about Glassdoor. What I got instead was a valuable set of perspectives on ways to leverage employee engagement to build a sustainable, positive company culture.
The three speakers—Ragini Parmar, Jeff Selander and Susan Daimler—shared their views on why their companies—Credit Karma, Health Catalyst and StreetEasy, respectively—are Glassdoor Best Places to Work and the importance of creating and maintaining a company culture that covers both large scale organizational goals and individual employee goals.
Each company may have a different mission but each shares a common trait: knowing how to encourage employees to build a strong, engaged culture.
Here are the five most important takeaways I took from these professionals.
1. Define what your culture is
Your organization may offer many top-tier perks, including great healthcare coverage, PTO, meals and other items that support work/life balance, but these benefits do not determine culture. Your culture is defined by two things: 1) The extracurricular activities your company encourages, e.g., a running club, weekly happy hour or collaborative group activities in or outside the office; and 2) The people you hire.
Jeff Selander (Health Catalyst) looks for three basic traits during the candidate selection process: smart, humble and hardworking. He believes HR needs to guide senior management in defining the characteristics of the individuals the company wants, and then follow through by creating a pipeline of candidates that fit the profile.
Putting the right people in place is a big step in developing an engaged workforce.
2. Let employees drive engagement
Employee engagement programs created and implemented by HR or senior management often do not receive the buy-in from employees organizations hope for.
Ragini Palmer (Credit Karma) outlined her plan to avoid this pitfall: she encourages employees to identify programs they would like to implement and then take ownership of those plans.
HR or Corporate Social Responsibility can act as support or a liaison to senior management for programs instead of being charged with creating and driving them. This engages employees by making them active participants in program creation. In turn, that helps create popular programs because they are based on what actual employees want.
3. Define metrics and track outcomes
Data drives business in all aspects of companies, and engagement should not be any different. Engagement can be driven by identifying what employees like and don’t like about the organization. With that in mind, consider launching preliminary and follow-up surveys to help your organization set benchmarks and track the success of engagement plans.
Creating a data survey may seem daunting! But there are many helpful resources to kick-start your effort and the questions you might ask (see this presentation for examples).
Analyzing the results alongside standard HR data (performance, absenteeism, retention, etc.) can help leadership quantify the success of their employee engagement efforts.
4. Reward engaged employees.
It is important to both encourage and acknowledge successful engagement programs. Ragini Palmer (Credit Karma) labeled those who create and sustain such programs “Wellness Ambassadors.”
Showcasing successes can inspire other employees to create their own programs. Meanwhile, acknowledgement is a highly effective and low-cost method for encouraging creativity and innovation.
5. Be open minded
A good engagement program is supportive of employees’ interests. You might think an idea odd or boast limited appeal, but even a small group enjoying a weekly activity will help an organization (as a whole) profit.
Remember, engagement occurs individual by individual, not through large groups. Having a dozen programs that cater to five to 10 people each is more valuable than one program that targets 150 people. Once your employees begin to see that programs are being supported and implemented by HR and senior leadership, other employees will start pitching their ideas to you!
A final note
If you are interested in exploring employee engagement programs further, I would recommend signing up for an upcoming Glassdoor event near you.
