It’s more important than ever for a company to have a culture that precedes it. The growing millennial workforce is fluid, changing jobs regularly in search of a better fit.
Companies are losing valuable time (and a lot of capital) on recruiting, hiring, and training employees. To create a thriving workplace that attracts and retains — top talent, you need to create an attractive, dynamic company culture.
Ernest Hemingway had a famous “iceberg theory.” This theory revolved around the notion that the true meaning of a story is often unseen, just like the bulk of an iceberg that lies beneath the surface of the water.
This very same concept can be applied to workplace culture. The visible perks, like flex time for working parents, and subsidized fitness memberships, are great incentives, but they’re just the tip of the much larger cultural iceberg.
Culture is the unseen set of values and behaviors of a company that defines the workplace experience. A great culture is built on two absolutes that forge a collective purpose:
Culture must include every employee. From the C-suite to frontline employees, the most successful cultures are all-inclusive.
Culture must be authentic. Every value you preach and policy you implement must be authentic, not just corporate lip service.
Companies with successful cultures have low turnover, a thriving workforce, and solid productivity that gives them a competitive edge in the marketplace. Most importantly: they embrace technology to promote their culture and align every employee with the company’s mission.
How The Budd Group Cultivates Safety Culture and Streamlines HR Operations with Beekeeper
1. Create an Inclusive Culture With a Digital Workplace
Traditional internal communication favors a top-down hierarchy that doesn’t leave room at the table for frontline employees — a population that makes up 80% of the world’s workforce.
A digital workplace platform with a mobile-first team app, like Beekeeper, will improve company culture by enabling two-way communication that gives every employee a voice. This inclusion is a sure-fire way to boost employee engagement. Use your digital workplace to encourage feedback by:
Holding office hours. Dedicate time every week over the workforce app where you’re available for your frontline employees. Ask questions, solicit ideas, and encourage feedback. Open communication is an easy way to improve company culture.
Sending surveys. A team app like Beekeeper allows business leaders to keep their finger on the pulse of employee engagement through regular surveys. Find out what’s working, and what’s not, from your customer-facing frontline employees to refine your operations and yield higher productivity.
2. Build a Diverse Workforce for an Innovative Culture
Make diversity a core component of your values to improve company culture. Every single employee has different ideas based on their background, ethnicity, gender, education, and experience. That means greater innovation for your company.
Build on that diversity through targeted recruiting efforts that connect with a wider range of applicants. Investing in a diverse workforce directly impacts business performance, delivering a 33% greater return than the average company.
Use your digital workplace to support workforce diversity and build a culture of innovation:
Educate employees on cross-cultural communications with their colleagues through their mobile workforce app. Provide literature, training videos, or even a way to say “hello” in a colleague’s native language.
When employees are connected to their peers, they are 20% more productive at work.
Crowdsource for ideas from your diverse staff over the digital workplace platform. Ask for input that can spur growth and ignite innovation.
Beekeeper’s team app has an inline translation feature that enables employees to communicate in their chosen language, enabling every employee to contribute.
3. Create a Circular Workforce Economy for a Culture of Growth
Companies spend money hiring and onboarding employees and usually stop there. Invest — and reinvest — in your employees to improve company culture. Develop a circular workforce economy by putting resources back into your workforce to develop a culture that promotes growth and cultivates leaders from within.
Use your digital workplace to reinvest in your workforce by:
Upskilling your employees. These days, most professional development training happens online. Use your team app to upskill your employees. For example, with the automation that’s changing manufacturing, employers should use a mobile app to retrain frontline employees in skills suited for Industry 4.0 jobs.
Employee-led initiatives. If an employee brings you an idea that has potential, let them take the reins. Use the Beekeeper team app to mentor them. Use private messaging to communicate directly, and file sharing to track their progress. This investment will create a culture of growth for both your employees and the company.
