Engaged employees will work harder for your organization and give discretionary effort.
Here are 10 questions that companies should ask themselves if they want to improve their company culture.
Personal Growth
Personal growth is something that you always need to be offering your team.
The reason why focusing on personal growth is so important is because even if an employee is engaged, if their opportunities for growth stop, they will plateau and become bored, making them disengaged.
You need to give employees autonomy, help them master their skills, and make them feel part of something bigger.
The more you help them grow, the better you’ll look as a leader.
Tip For Managers
Set aside a small budget (a few hundred dollars) and encourage employees take courses online to improve their skills.
Feedback
How often do you give employees feedback? When you do give feedback, is it meaningful? Or are you doing more harm than good?
These are the types of questions you need to think about when dealing with feedback. The truth is, employees crave feedback, but managers avoid giving it to them.
I don’t blame them. Giving someone constructive feedback is one of the most awkward things to do, especially to an employee.
What many managers will do, is either put it off altogether or just wait until their next review to bring something up. That’s a huge mistake though.
Feedback is all about changing behavior, and you want them to change their behavior right away, not in a month from now.
Tip For Managers
Give feedback in real-time. The sooner you can link your feedback to the behavior you want changed the better. When you give feedback, make sure to follow these feedback rules to have it go well.
Recognition
An employee that doesn’t get credit for something they did when they ultimately know they deserve credit is one of the most frustrating things for an employee to go through.
The likelihood of them becoming disengaged and not trying as hard in the future just went up by a lot.
People need that rush of dopamine to motivate them to work harder. Just a simple “thank you, great job” can go a long way.
There’s honestly no reason why recognition should be lacking in any company. It’s free, takes seconds to do, and can have long lasting benefits.
Tip For Managers
Understand how much power recognition can have on the morale of your team. Make sure to celebrate small wins with your team. Start noticing the small things that people are doing and give them a specific kudos, like “I saw that you stayed late last Thursday, I really appreciate you doing that. Keep up the good work!”
Relationship With Manager
Research from Gallup shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores, making the relationship with managers the most important thing to focus on.
Mid-level managers are in a tough position, I genuinely feel for them. They get no credit, all the blame, and have all the responsibility to motivate a team plus get their own work done.
It’s a rough life, but companies can make sure that managers have the resources, training, and support that they need to build a successful team.
As a manager, you need to take the time to get to know your employees and connect with them on a deeper level. It might be different than what you were used to when you were growing up, but times have changed.
Employees want to feel like they’re cared about and are valued at work.
Tip For Managers
Learn more about emotional intelligence – specifically empathy. If you want to start showing a genuine interest in your employees you need to understand them and what they’re going through. Building empathy can help you with this.
Happiness
How happy are your employees in general? Does it seem like they’re in a good mood?
The trickiest part of this happiness question is that whether we realize it or not, our happiness at home affects our happiness at work and vice versa.
Without getting too personal, it might be a good idea to show employees that you want to make sure they’re happy both in and out of work.
Happy workers have been found to be 12% more productive than unhappy workers, and when you think about it, it makes sense.
Tip For Managers
Let employees know that you’re always happy to help out with whatever you can, even if it’s outside of work. During private one-on-ones, you can also ask them to rate their happiness (and explain their answer), and then see if there’s any way you can help. You can learn more about all of this in a blog post about the science of what makes us happy.
Wellness
Wellness at work is a huge problem, and the tough truth is that even when a company does things like buy healthy fruit, pay for gym memberships, etc. many employees still aren’t healthy.
There’s only so much you can do, so don’t get too down on yourself if some initiatives you’ve tried aren’t working perfectly.
There are some examples of companies doing cool things to promote wellness at work (NextJump is my favorite example), like running contests or challenges to incentivize employees to act.
The best thing to focus on is work-life balance. Don’t overwork your employees, and make sure that they feel comfortable taking time off when they need to.
Tip For Managers
I believe your best bet here is to lead by example. If your team respects you and sees you having a good work-life balance, going to the gym, eating well, they’ll be less likely to opt for those unhealthy behaviors. When you’re looking for ideas of places to go out as a team, suggesting healthy options will start to plant the seeds for everyone to get healthier. Positive encouragement from everyone helps a lot too.
Ambassadorship
How likely would an employee working on your team be to recommend your company as a good place to work?
That’s a really powerful question, and if you’re not already using the Net Promoter Score, you should start right away.
It’s the most valuable metric in determining whether people enjoy coming to work.
Your NPS score is something you should become obsessed about tracking and improving. Try your best to get your score to 50 or above.
Tip For Managers
Dig deep into answers from that question. If someone doesn’t want to recommend your company as a place to work, find out why right away. Tell employees that they shouldn’t be afraid to voice their concerns about anything at the company.
Satisfaction
Employees need to be able to work in a comfortable space in order to be productive. If the office is too cold, has poor lighting, or is too loud, no work will be able to get done.
You want to do your best to create an environment where employees genuinely enjoy being there.
Monitoring how things are going and adjusting is the key here. Ask employees what you could do to make their workplace even better.
I’m not saying you definitely need a skate ramp in the office, but it’s pretty fun if you have one 😉
Tip For Managers
Many people confuse career satisfaction with compensation satisfaction, but if you’re not able to do anything about compensation, there are other ways you can please your employees. Things like flexible schedules or side projects are great ways to satisfy employees.
Company Alignment
Everyone talks about hiring for “culture fit” and making sure there’s a good “culture fit”. The way to ensure that is to make sure that an employee’s values align well with the company’s values.
You need to live and breath your core values, and then only hire people who believe those values as passionately as you do.
There’s no such thing as too much communication, so make sure to repeat the core values over and over again to remind everyone why they’re so important.
Tip For Managers
Print the core values and hang them up in the office so that everyone can see them all the time. It’s important to make sure everyone is living and breathing the core values.
Relationship With Colleagues
One of Gallup’s 12 questions on their famous Q12 survey is “I have a best friend at work”, because they know the importance of having someone at work you can connect with and share with.
Team outings and office games can help, but the point is you want to facilitate those connections. Encourage people to talk to each other, share stories about your weekends, and go out for lunches or drinks with the team.
Tip For Managers
Build a culture of recognition, where employees are praising each other and helping each other grow. This will help create those bonds and make sure everyone gets the recognition they deserve. You can read this blog post learn more about how to build a culture of recognition.
What Questions Do You Think Are Important?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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