Workplace Leadership Guide: Six Tips on Creating a Great Company Culture for All Employees

October 31, 2022

by Gabrielle Christman

Workplace Culture

Workplace Leadership Guide: Six Tips on Creating a Great Company Culture for All Employees

With what seems like an everchanging job market, it can be hard to attract top employees and retain them for a long period of time. One factor to combat these challenges that many employers are focusing in on is developing their company culture. Company culture is defined as the shared goals and values, practices and ideals of an organization.

According to Gallup, only 27% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they believe in their company’s values. With having such a low number of employees fully embracing their company’s values, many employers are trying to figure out the best way to boost engagement in company culture for their workers.

Read below to find out how to improve company culture and retain top employees.

Establish Effective Onboarding

Having great company culture starts at the beginning of an employee’s journey at your organization. Having a shaky start when an employee begins can impact how long they will stay at the company. One way to avoid this is to establish a comprehensive onboarding process for all new hires.

Zippia found that organizations that have a solid onboarding process increases their new hire retention by 82% and productivity increases by 70%.

Some examples of effective onboarding include:

Have a presentation focused solely on the goals of the organization
Set up meetings for the new employee to meet individuals in different departments
Be available and open to answer any questions they may have
Make training resources easily available
Set up regular check-ins with their manager

Implementing these strategies into your onboarding process can leave a new hire feeling more comfortable in your organization and could increase short and long-term retention.

Share and Follow Company Values

While it is important to share company values to new hires, it is also important to make sure they are reiterated to current employees. By consistently touching on your organization’s values, it helps employees get familiar with the values and understand them as an important part of your team culture.

Leadership IQ reported that only 16% of organization leaders talk about company values daily, 17% discuss them weekly, 23% discuss monthly and the remaining 44% either talk about them quarterly or not at all during the year.

Consider including your organization’s values in company-wide meetings and town halls. This is a great time to recognize teams or employees who are living up to your organization’s core values. In addition to providing recognition, this also allows the values to be less theoretical to employees.

It is also a good idea to reiterate company values in your company’s physical workspace and make them easily accessible to employees.

Increase Employee Recognition

A great way to hold up the values of the organization and to show employee appreciation is to consider adding in programs and incentives into your team workflow.

According to WorkHuman, when there is employee recognition in the workplace, employees are five times more likely to stay at an organization and feel connected to the company’s values. These feelings of appreciation are essential when retaining employees.

Employee recognition does not have to be extravagant and costly. Some examples of simple employee recognition include:

Weekly employee shout-out via email
Anniversary and birthday shout-outs
Award programs
Personalized and direct messages of recognition

Consider adding programs and incentives like these into your team workflow and you will be on your way to building a more positive company culture.

Schedule Regular Touch-Base Meetings

When you’re managing a team, balancing a demanding workload, dealing with your personal responsibilities and more, it is easy to get caught up in work and put team meetings to the side.

Harvard Business Review found that employees of managers who do not have consistent one-on-one meetings are 67% more likely to be disengaged in both their work and the values of the company. When employees are disengaged with their duties, their work will likely suffer, which can be detrimental to both the employee and the organization.

Touch-base meetings do not have to be just one-on-one. Consider having team meetings to catch up on project statuses and discuss any barriers employees are facing. These meetings can be useful for brainstorming and coming up with new ideas. Additionally, leave time for people to connect on a personal level and feel more intermixed as a team. These meetings can be weekly or bi-weekly depending on workload of you and your team.

No matter if your workforce is in person, remote or even hybrid, it is easy to have these meetings in-person or in a virtual setting using programs like Microsoft Teams.

Encourage Open Communication

Without open communication, employees may feel like they are undervalued and may not know how to best prioritize time at work. On the manager’s side, without communication they could be unaware of the barriers that their team may be facing. In fact, McKinsey recently reported that teams that have open communication see a productivity increase of 20-25%.

For example, if you have planned paid time off (PTO) coming up, make sure you give your employee notice and provide them a gameplan of what should be done when you are gone. Having this open sense of communication will give your employees time to plan and could also make it less stressful on yourself when you leave.

Open communication does not only apply to PTO, but it can also be helpful when discussing projects, daily tasks, personal life and more. Consider the ways in which you can be more open to your team to have a more inclusive and communitive environment.

Provide Consistent Feedback

One of the many tasks of a manager is to give both positive and constructive feedback to your employees. LinkedIn discovered that 75% of employees that received feedback appreciated it and said that it helped them be more successful in their position.

Providing feedback to your employees only once or twice a year does not promote a productive team culture. This can make workers feel like they are undervalued and even forgotten in the organization. Instead, set both formal and informal touchpoints with your employees to provide consistent feedback.

Consistent feedback can have many different forms. For example, if you see a task or project come through that you think is excellent work, directly reach out to the employee(s) who worked on it and congratulate them on a job well done.

On the other side, if you see that an employee’s work is lacking in quality, reach out to them and give them tips on how to fix the work in a positive and open way. If this becomes a trend of lackluster work, you can mitigate any larger issues by establishing a gameplan to work on any lacking areas.

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With the competitive labor market going on today, great company culture can be the deciding factor for many hires that can take your organization to the next level.

Looking for your next great hire? Contact Hunter to get your hiring journey started.

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Boomerang Employees: How Employers Can Tap Into This Unique Talent Pool

As we approach the end of the year, the demand for talent remains strong, with 10.1 million job openings reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August. Employers are looking for any advantage to attract talent for their organization. We’ve covered topics such as a streamlined interview process, employer branding, data driven recruitment and other methods for employers to stand out to job seekers. Perhaps an untapped or often forgotten about talent pool is boomerang employees. Boomerang employees are classified as workers who left an organization for one reason or another and then return after a period of time.

Georgianna Rhoda, Director of Recruiting at Hunter Recruiting, recently spoke on the topic of boomerang employees at the Paradigm For Parity Annual Meeting. She spoke on current trends, the benefits of embracing boomerang employees and provided advice for employers to take advantage of this candidate pool. Rhoda explains, “In 2010, only about two percent of hires were boomerang employees according to data by LinkedIn. Last year, that number was up to over 4 percent.” In addition to the uptick in the amount of people returning to their previous employers, they are also returning in a quicker timeframe. Rhoda adds, “The data also showed that boomerang employees are returning within an average of 17 months, whereas 10 years ago, they were returning in an average of 21 months.”

What does this uptick mean for employers? To start, they can likely expect boomerang employees to be some of their top performers, with a 2021 Academy of Management study showing that returning workers consistently outperformed new hires. Rhoda explains, “Companies who are leveraging boomerang employees can fill their open roles with individuals who already have an understanding of the organization’s values, culture and business operational models. These employees should be able to get up and running faster than new employees and can start making an impact on the business almost right away.”

How exactly can employers attract and effectively bring in boomerang employees? Read below for our tips to tap into this unique talent pool.

Ensure an Effective Offboarding Process

The first way to ensure a positive experience for employees who are leaving and potential boomerang employees, is to have an effective offboarding process. If employees have a good experience when leaving your company, they may feel more inclined to consider opportunities at your organization in the future. You can create an effective offboarding process by ensuring employees feel supported during their transition. Guide them through the offboarding process by answering any questions they have, making sure they are well-informed on next steps and providing them any tools and resources for navigating the transition. Additionally, implement exit surveys that ask questions to enable positive change within your organization. Rhoda explains, “Exit surveys can be an extremely useful tool for analyzing trends and assessing reasons for departure from your organization. However, to make them effective, employers should create a plan for reviewing survey results with upper management regularly to ensure that the data is being used to drive decisions and ultimately cause positive change within the organization.”

Have a Reason For Them to Come Back

An employee can leave for a number of different reasons. They may have had a bad manager, didn’t enjoy their day-to-day responsibilities or received better compensation and benefits at a different organization. Whatever the case, to attract boomerang employees, your organization may need to give them a reason to come back. Have you improved your benefits, implemented flexible working or changed your compensation structure? These are just some of the things your organization can do to stand out to previous employees. “When an organization is doing things to improve employee experience, they are not only retaining current employees, they are also attracting new hires and boomerang employees, so these initiatives should be highlighted,” explains Rhoda. Companies will highlight new benefits on their career page, on social media or even in a newsletter geared toward job seekers.

Ask The Right Questions

When interviewing boomerang employees, companies will want to make sure that previous employees are coming back to the organization for the right reasons. One way to ensure this is to ask effective questions. Rhoda explains, “Employers are right to be slightly cautious of reemployment within their organization. They need to consider factors such as, ‘how will this person returning impact our company’s culture?’ Or ‘what is their motivation for returning?’ These are questions they can ask to ensure that the employee has good intentions and that bringing them back onto the team will be beneficial for both parties.” Consider asking questions about why the individual is interested in returning to your organization and why they were motivated to leave previously. Additionally, inquire about what skills they have developed in their time away. With that, consider what opportunities are a good fit for them in their career now. Just as you want to encourage reemployment, you should be thoughtful in understanding if the opportunity is the right fit for both the previous employee and your organization.

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How to Effectively Establish and Discuss Your Career Goals

October 21, 2022

by Taylor Graf

Career Planning & Growth Personal Development

How to Effectively Establish and Discuss Your Career Goals

As the end of the year approaches, you may be thinking about your current career goals and setting new ones for the upcoming year. While establishing these goals is important to long-term career success, it is also a good idea to discuss these with your manager so that you can ensure that they understand your goals and, hopefully, help you work towards them in your current position.

1. Set Your Goals

Whether you already have goals identified, or are starting from scratch, you should set your goals by writing them down. A recent study conducted by the Dominican University of California found that people who write down their goals are 20 percent more successful in accomplishing them than those who did not. Make sure that wherever you write down your goals that they are accessible so that you can easily come back to them throughout the year.

A good way to make sure that your goals are properly formatted for success, is to utilize the SMART goal method. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely.

Specific: When setting your goals, you want to make sure that they are detailed and leave very little room for ambiguity. For example, if your goal is “I want to advance my network,” you should make it more specific to say, “I want to advance my network by joining two or more professional organizations before the next quarter.”

Measurable: To make your goal measurable, you will want to set a realistic date for the goal to be achieved. In the example above, you could set the next quarter’s start date as the time to complete the goal.

Attainable: When setting your career goals, you want to make sure they are realistic and achievable, while also being challenging enough to work towards. Consider the time frame and steps needed to reach the goal and assess whether it is realistic or needs to be adjusted.

Relevant: When establishing goals, especially those related to your career, you want to make sure they are relevant. For example, gaining a certification in programming could advance your knowledge in that area and develop your technical skills, but if your ultimate goal is to move up into a career in Financial Management, gaining that certification may not be relevant.

Timely: When you are setting goals, you will also want to consider when you will be able to start working toward the goal. What can you do to start working toward your goal right away?

By utilizing the SMART method, you can create goals that are attainable, actionable and measurable and set yourself up for future success.

2. Understand Your Current Position

While creating goals, it is important to consider how your current position and company structure fit into these goals. Have you previously discussed a plan for advancement with your manager? Does your company encourage lateral moves within the organization? These may be important items to consider when creating goals and thinking about the actionable steps that you may need to take to reach those goals.

Additionally, write down a minimum of two to three ways you can reach your identified goals. For example, if your goal is to move into a leadership position, you may write down a tactic such as, “Take on an ownership role of upcoming projects,” or something related. By understanding your role in the organization and considering the ways you can leverage your current position to reach your goals, you can have a productive conversation with your manager about how to attain those opportunities.

3. Come Prepared and Ask Questions

When you are ready to have a discussion with your manager, make sure that they are aware ahead of time that you plan on discussing your goals. Before the meeting, have your goals, tactics and questions identified. When considering questions to ask your manager, you’ll want to think about any areas of uncertainty and consider asking questions about how the organization can help you reach your goals. The goal is to have an open discussion with your manager about how you can reach your goals while also adding value to the organization.

Furthermore, consider having discussions about your strengths and weaknesses and the ways they can help and hurt you when trying to reach your goals. Your manager is likely familiar with the things you do well and the areas you can improve on. Be open minded to developing your skills in areas for improvement. Think about these ahead of time with any questions you may have. By coming to the discussion prepared, the meeting should stay on track, and your manager will know that you put thought and consideration into this conversation.

4. Follow Through and Follow-up

After discussing goals with your manager, getting answers to your questions and establishing a plan for reaching your goals, it’s time to start working towards them. Hold yourself accountable by setting calendar reminders or signing up for classes or events in advance. Consider asking your manager to hold you accountable to your goals by checking in with you at various points throughout the year.

It is also a good idea to track your progress on your goals over time. In one-on-one meetings with your manager, bring up your goals to discuss progress and any barriers. Ask if your manager has advice or opportunities to overcome the obstacles that stand in your way. As you complete goals, celebrate the wins, and set new ones. Even as you grow in your career, there will always be new opportunities to develop skills and advance your career in new and exciting ways.

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Four Actionable Tips and Resources to Tackle Anxiety at Work

The economy, world events and the news are constantly changing, and it is affecting employees everywhere. These real-world stresses are manifesting their ways into employees’ daily work lives.

According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, nearly 70% of workers say that their anxiety moderately affects their workday. Additionally, 40% have said that anxiety causes persistent stress in both their workday and personal life.

Having high anxiety is not sustainable and can lead to burnout and greater mental hardship. Taking steps to address these feelings is important and should done in a timely manner.

Read below to learn how to reduce your anxieties and improve your workday.

Limit Your Time Online

It is easy to get wrapped up in alarming headlines about layoffs, health threats, rising housing/food costs and more. The American Psychological Association have conducted studies that show the more people read the news, the more likely they are to develop anxiety symptoms or disorders.

Staying in touch with current events is important, but when too much is being consumed, it can take a massive toll on mental health. With the power of smartphones, news and headlines are accessible everywhere you go, and it can feel very hard to disconnect.

This act of consistently reading alarming news stories is known as “doom scrolling” and it is impacting workers across the U.S. For example, if someone is constantly reading articles about companies that are making layoffs, they can find themselves nervous about the state of their job and might have great feelings of anxiety when they go into work.

In addition to being mindful about the kinds of content you are consuming online; consider the amount of time you are spending on your phone overall. According to a study done by Piedmont, excessive smartphone use can directly affect your sleep due to bright lights blocking melatonin secretion which is the hormone that regulates sleep. When you have disrupted sleep, this could lead to higher feelings of anxiety.

Whether you are at work or at home, take time to turn off your phone and live in the moment without any outside distractions. Doing this simple task consistently, over an extended period of time, can go a long way and greatly improve your mood.

Make Time for Wellness and Self-Care

Even though work is important, taking care of yourself should be your priority. Without a clear and healthy self, your work will not be able to get done in an effective or productive manner.

In a study from the University of York, it was found that going outside and engaging in activities, like sports and nature walking, can greatly reduce anxiety and help an individual’s mood overall.

For example, simply taking 20 minutes out of the day to take a walk around the block can reduce stresses and help you get into a better mindset.

While at work, you can practice similar self-care tactics, such as:

Avoid eating your lunch at your desk
Schedule pauses and downtime during the workday
Socialize with coworkers
Utilize your paid time off

Self-care at home can look like taking a bath, eating your favorite food, getting an extra hour of sleep or hanging out with an old friend.

Reduce Caffeine Consumption

When you are looking for a quick pick me up, you might consider drinking a cup of coffee or a soda. However, having excessive amounts of caffeine can worsen anxiety symptoms and have negative effects on your daily wellness.

According to Medical News Today, having too much caffeine can cause feelings of nausea, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, insomnia and more. All these symptoms can directly affect your workday and make any existing anxieties even worse.

Here are some actionable tips to help you stay awake and alert at work, include:

Invest in a standing desk
Practice deep breathing between meetings
Increase Vitamin C intake
Sip on herbal tea

If you rely on caffeine to wake up in the morning, consider alternative measures like drinking a cold glass of water, exercising before starting your day or going outside shortly after you wake up.

Reach Out for Help

When you are struggling with facing issues, finding solace in others can help your worries and improve your workday.

If you feel comfortable, have a sit-down conversation with a trusted manager or human resources representative to let them know that you are facing mental struggles with anxiety. This can lead to a conversation about tools and resources that are available through the company, and what can be done to help you get through this difficult time. Also, consider actions you can take in your personal life such as talking with a trusted friend or family member or seeing a professional counselor.

While it’s important to take care of yourself, companies should also be actively looking out for the wellness of their employees and provide resources.

Many companies have implemented mental health resources for their employees to tackle these types of problems to help employees who are going through mental hardships. For example, ScriptDoc, a healthcare technology company, implemented a mandatory mental health day off each month for all their employees. Duolingo, the language learning startup, offers their employees an on-site gym and a fully paid membership to Care.com to make sure they are in a healthy mindset both in and out of work.

Balancing work and family life can be overwhelming. If you are dealing with anxiety at work, it is important to tackle those anxieties head on, so they do not manifest into something bigger.

Workplace Leadership Guide: Six Tips on Creating a Great Company Culture for All Employees

Workplace Leadership Guide: Six Tips on Creating a Great Company Culture for All Employees

Establish Effective Onboarding

Share and Follow Company Values

Increase Employee Recognition

Schedule Regular Touch-Base Meetings

Encourage Open Communication

Provide Consistent Feedback

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Ensure an Effective Offboarding Process

Have a Reason For Them to Come Back

Ask The Right Questions

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How to Effectively Establish and Discuss Your Career Goals

How to Effectively Establish and Discuss Your Career Goals

1. Set Your Goals

2. Understand Your Current Position

3. Come Prepared and Ask Questions

4. Follow Through and Follow-up

Similar Posts

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Four Actionable Tips and Resources to Tackle Anxiety at Work

Four Actionable Tips and Resources to Tackle Anxiety at Work

Limit Your Time Online

Make Time for Wellness and Self-Care

Reduce Caffeine Consumption

Reach Out for Help

Similar Posts

How to Build a Strong Engineering Workforce: Best Practices for Employers

How do Executive Search Retainers Work?

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