For new generations entering the workforce, a healthy environment and positive work culture are top of mind. Employers who want to foster a productive, loyal workforce should prioritize these qualities, too.
There are endless ways to engage your employees and build an attractive culture, but some strategies will fit your business better than others. This guide explores how to understand your current workplace culture and shape it with programs tailored to your organization’s unique needs.
Positive Workplace Culture
Whether you’ve made intentional decisions to develop your workplace culture or not, your organization already has one. Your company’s culture is made up of the behaviors, attitudes, and relationships of all of your organization’s employees, including the leadership team.
While workplace culture is a psychological concept that can be influenced by employee personalities and opinions, more concrete, physical factors can help uncover how specific facets of your company’s culture are shaped.
Here are a few factors that can influence workplace culture:
- Your mission and values are foundational elements for culture. They provide an opportunity to clearly state the purpose of your organization. As you develop employee engagement programs, tying them to your organization’s values or mission statement ensures your culture is aligned with the vision you’ve set.
- Your organization’s industry has a culture that trickles down to your company. This can mean median salaries and normalized expectations, like frequent travel or dress code. However, your industry’s service or product delivery also affects your culture. For instance, if you run a dog grooming business, it’s likely a safe bet that most of your employees are passionate about pets and animal welfare. This shared interest can be a focus of employee engagement activities.
- The physical design of your workplace also impacts your culture. An open floor plan encourages collaboration, whereas cubicles or offices might be more conducive to individualized tasks that require deep focus. How employees interact with physical elements further influences culture. Open office doors welcome communication, and employees congregating at a large table for lunch signals friendliness.
- The company policies you set are one of the most direct ways you can influence your workplace culture. We’ll explore engagement-specific programs and policies below, but the expectations outlined for employees cover more than just engagement. For instance, generous parental leave policies promote a supportive family-friendly culture, and an anti-harassment policy promotes a respectful and safe workplace.
By analyzing your current operations and activities, as well as surveying your employees, you can gauge where your current workplace culture stands. Not only is it important to understand your culture for current employees, but it also impacts your organization’s recruiting. You want to attract and retain employees who align with your organization’s vision, which will lead to more engaged and successful workers.
Employee Engagement Program Ideas
Double the Donation’s guide to employee engagement defines engagement as “how employees feel about and behave at their work.” Engagement and culture go hand-in-hand, meaning introducing engagement programs aligned with your organization’s vision and values will reinforce the positive culture you’ve built.
We’ll walk through six ideas for employee engagement that support workplace culture below:
Implement a peer-to-peer recognition program.
A positive workplace culture should encourage employees and recognize the unique value they bring to the organization, helping them feel appreciated, supported, and motivated to do their best work.
Your workplace may already have a top-down appreciation model where managers recognize top-performing employees. In addition to that, your business can further a culture of appreciation and promote social wellness by implementing a peer-to-peer recognition program.
With these programs, any employee can show their appreciation for any other employee. This method results in more employees’ work being recognized, as co-workers are more likely to notice small but important contributions than a supervisor who occasionally checks in.
One way to structure your peer-to-peer recognition program is with eCards. Appreciation eCards are digital greeting cards employees can send to one another along with a message shouting out their accomplishments.
To reinforce company values, you can create specific eCards that recognize different values, like this example of an employee appreciation eCard celebrating trust.
Change up day-to-day tasks.
49% of workers report feeling bored or experiencing monotony at work, with nearly one in five respondents saying they feel that way “all the time.” Monotony is linked to performing repetitive tasks, and pervasive feelings of boredom stifle engagement. While not every workplace is able to change employees’ day-to-day responsibilities, some can.
Engage your employees by giving them new types of work, encouraging them to challenge themselves by taking on new responsibilities, and trying new strategies to complete daily tasks. For instance, Gingr’s dog daycare ideas list shares how pet-care businesses can engage their employees and canine clients with a range of new activities, like:
- Frisbee toss
- Bubble machine
- Hide and seek
- Dog TV
- Outdoor adventure
These ideas run the gamut from high-energy to relaxed activities, so dog daycare workers can change up how they approach their basic responsibility (taking care of dogs) depending on their own energy levels. Consider where you can shake up the day-to-day workflow to engage your employees.
Promote autonomy.
The number one way to motivate your employees is to let them make their own decisions. Psychologists have found that external factors, such as money, only impact motivation so much when compared to intrinsic motivation, which is fueled by self-determination.
For your business, this means employees will be most engaged when they feel a personal investment in their work. Often, the best way to achieve this is to let employees take the reins on projects so they feel a sense of ownership they wouldn’t otherwise have.
A few structured ways to promote autonomy in the workplace include:
- Dedicated free periods where employees can work on whatever they desire, but are expected to have an end project
- Pitching sessions where employees can submit suggestions for new projects, and if their idea is chosen, they get to oversee it
- Providing flexible working environments where employees have the freedom to decide when and where they’ll work
Along with motivating employees, giving your team the autonomy to suggest and pursue new endeavors can boost creativity and improve your business’s operations. If your organization values being proactive and developing leaders, fostering autonomy will also support an aligned culture.
Provide health-related resources.
Employees are more likely to feel engaged at work when their basic needs are met. Providing health-related resources both in and out of the office can promote employee well-being and lay the foundation for strong employee engagement.
A few ways to encourage employees to live healthy lives include:
- Issuing health challenges. Encourage employees to be active participants in their health journey by creating workplace challenges related to health. Tools like Givhero make it easy for employees to join and participate in these challenges, no matter where they are.
- Reimbursing health-related purchases. Some businesses promote employee health by alleviating the financial burden with reimbursement programs. For these initiatives, employees can purchase equipment, attend exercise classes, or buy memberships related to health and wellness. Then, they can provide the receipts to your business for proof of purchase—and to verify the purchase is health-related—to get reimbursed.
- Providing resources. To improve their physical and mental health, most of your employees will need to look to external services. Empower them to find the help they need by providing a list of resources, such as contact information for local gyms, health food stores, physical therapists, psychiatrists, and mental health helplines.
Always ensure employees have a safe work environment, both physically and psychologically. This will reduce workplace accidents and stress, increase trust, and ensure you maintain a productive, supportive work environment.
Support learning opportunities.
Employees feel engaged and provide more value when they have the opportunity to grow in their roles. Empower them to continue learning about your industry and improving their skills by supporting various training opportunities.
For instance, you might:
- Create mentorship programs. Ask employees to volunteer to mentor their colleagues, whether the mentees are new employees or existing team members looking to upskill. The mentor relationship allows your team to get practical knowledge of their roles and form strong professional relationships.
- Encourage conference attendance. Conferences and workshops are prime opportunities for employees to make connections, learn new skills, and discover emerging industry trends.
- Invite team members to host presentations. Create a culture of support and learning by encouraging team members to share their knowledge with one another through structured presentations. For example, an employee might learn new digital marketing skills after attending a conference. Then, when they come back to the office, they could give a presentation to share what they learned.
- Schedule regular career check-ins. These conversations can be included in performance reviews. Better yet, career check-ins can be a monthly or quarterly agenda item for one-on-one meetings between supervisors and employees. Having conversations about how employees want to grow their careers at your business will help you identify and connect your team to relevant learning opportunities.
Learning and development are often a priority for ambitious, top talent across industries. Establishing these programs will not only support your current workforce but also attract aligned applicants to your candidate pool.
Encourage social responsibility.
Employees working in socially conscious workplaces are more likely to be responsible, giving, and socially conscious themselves. Plus, employees will feel more loyal to and motivated to work hard for employers whose values align with theirs.
Consider implementing corporate giving programs that enable employees to give back to their communities. Some popular programs include:
- Matching gifts. In a matching gift or donation program, your business will make an equal donation when an employee gives to an eligible nonprofit. For example, if an employee gives $50 to your local animal shelter, your business would match their gift by also donating $50. This demonstrates your commitment to the causes your employees care about.
- Volunteer grants. Similar to matching gifts, volunteer grants involve your business donating to the nonprofits your employees support. But instead of requiring employees to donate themselves, volunteer grants are based on hours volunteered. For example, you might donate $10 for each hour an employee volunteers.
- Volunteer time off (VTO). VTO is a special type of PTO where employees receive time off specifically to volunteer. Draft a VTO policy that outlines what types of activities qualify for VTO, how far in advance employees should request VTO, and if VTO hours carry over from year to year.
This is just scratching the surface of potential corporate giving programs. Talk with your employees about the causes they support and what types of corporate social responsibility initiatives they would like to see.
Engaged employees are more loyal, productive, creative, and motivated. Survey your team to learn what types of engagement programs they are interested in, and start brainstorming how these initiatives can fit into your unique workplace.
