When considering a business’ strengths, there is a tendency to focus on its more quantifiable aspects - it generates x dollars in revenue, or leverages advanced solutions a, b, and c. While these kinds of competitive advantages are valuable to have, it is also important to recognize how critical one of your more qualifiable strengths can be: your company culture.
Your company’s culture is its identity - the impression that your company leaves when someone makes contact. As such, there are assorted reasons that it pays to create an engaging and inclusive company culture.
Draws in Talent
Let me ask you this: would you rather work someplace that had a reputation of nurturing incoming talent and ensuring that this talent had the resources and access that they needed to succeed in their position, or someplace notorious for leaving new employees to fend for themselves, providing minimal direction when direction is necessary to successfully complete a task? My money is on the first option.
One of the biggest benefits to creating a positive culture in the workplace is that more people will want to make it their place of work. This gives you a wider pool of talent from which to select the best candidates, creating a stronger business.
Of course, attracting this talent is one thing, having it stick around is quite another.
Retains Talent and Reduces Turnover
As long as your company culture matches its reputation, the individuals who accept your offer of employment are less likely to leave, barring any personal circumstances that force them to. This is important, as the sudden loss of an employee can have assorted impacts on your business. These impacts can include dropped processes, missed opportunities, and the costs associated with finding, hiring, and onboarding someone to replace the lost employee.
Of course, you don’t have to worry so much about these impacts if your employees aren’t motivated to leave. This is where having a positive company culture is so valuable - you can better avoid the significant costs of losing an employee, continuing to benefit from their skills in the workplace. Research conducted by Gallup indicated that only 37 percent of employees engaged with their work were actively seeking new employment opportunities, compared to a staggering (albeit understandable) 73 percent of those who had disengaged from their work.
Columbia University conducted research as well, and their results followed in the same vein. According to their results, organizations with strong company cultures saw turnover rates of 13.9 percent. 13.9 percent, compared to the 48.4 percent turnover rates at companies with poor company culture.
Boosts Productivity
A happy employee is a productive employee, which translates to direct benefits for your business if your employees remain satisfied. The right company culture can motivate your employees significantly. The same Gallup research referenced above demonstrated that engaged employees saw productivity boosts of 21 percent. Another study, by IBM-owned Kenexa, suggested that organizations with an engaged workforce were able to bring in twice the income as an organization without these levels of engagement.
Reduces Employee Burnout
There are many reasons that an employee can experience some level of burnout, whether their schedules are overpacked or their hours are simply too long to be sustainable. However, a negative company culture is often overlooked as the root cause of an employee becoming disengaged with their work.
While employee burnout may seem like more of the employee’s problem at first consideration, there are some very real consequences that a business will need to deal with. For instance, employee burnout has been linked to an estimated 49 percent increase in workplace accidents, and a 60 percent increase in errors.
Stressed out employees are a liability to your company, but helping them to reduce that stress with a better company culture can turn these liabilities into true assets.
Better Attendance
Speaking of assets, your employees aren’t going to be very good ones if they are never in the office. A Harvard Business Review study reported an increase in employee absenteeism of 37 percent among disengaged employees. Naturally, if your employees aren’t completing their responsibilities due to this absenteeism, it is going to have an impact on both your business’ success and internal morale.
However, a more positive company culture encourages your employees to report to work, and as discussed above, leads to improved productivity while they’re there.
Is Company Culture Really So Important?
Based on the outcomes discussed above, it is pretty clear that the better your company culture is, the more effectively your business will be able to operate. So, how can you improve yours?
One way is to give your team the tools they need to complete their tasks more easily than they could with outdated and insufficient IT solutions - and the efficiency boost that new IT solutions will bring can free up some time to develop your company culture even more. Bevlin can help to make sure that you are using the tools that are best suited for your company’s (and by extension, your employees’) needs. Give us a call at 781-679-0172 to learn more.
