Company culture is the unifying element that holds everyone in an organization together. Culture encompasses the written and unwritten behavioral norms and expectations of those within the company.

Why Is Company Culture Important?

According to Alternative Board’s 2016 Small Business Pulse Survey, 93 percent of entrepreneurs believe that promoting company culture is good for productivity and creativity.

Recent studies have revealed that employees highly value company culture in their decision to stay with—or leave—a company. Moreover, it has been proven that employees who identify with and feel a sense of belonging to a company’s culture are more productive, happier and want to work for the company for longer.

Retaining employees who are happy and productive is not only good for employee morale, but also for your bottom line. High turnover is costly and can also harm your company’s culture and cause remaining workers to become disengaged and unproductive.

A positive and strong company culture not only improves retention rates; it also improves recruiting rates. Prospective employees care about your reputation as a company and are evaluating potential employers on their corporate culture. In fact, many millennials view cultural compatibility with a company as just as important as salary.

How Can I Improve My Company’s Culture?

According to Staples Business Advantage, companies can do the following five things to improve their culture:

Inspire collaboration

Creating a collaborative organization allows the free flow of ideas leading to a more innovative and creative organization. Employees want to work where they feel like they are part of something important. Help employees tie their work back to the company goals.

Respect employee input

Having open communication with employees helps build a string culture. Because leaders will be providing employees with constructive performance feedback, it is important for leaders to be open to receiving feedback from employees as well.

Improve meetings

On average employees currently spend 35-50 percent of their time in meetings. Imagine the toll this can take on the productivity and morale of your team if your meetings are not effective. Check out our Effective Meeting Toolkit for ideas for improvement.

Support flexible work arrangements

According to research by the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), 55 percent of employees cited workplace flexibility as a very important aspect of their job satisfaction. Flexible work arrangements can be customized to meet the needs of the organization and the employees. Check out this recent blog for some ideas on getting started.

Recruit strong leadership

Research from Gallup has shown that managers can account for up to 70 percent variance in employee engagement. Hiring great leaders and providing ongoing leadership development opportunities not only increases the retention of those leaders, but also of the employees they manage.

These suggestions are just a handful of ideas for improving your culture. For more information on company culture, contact the HR experts at Helpside at 1-800-748-5102 or humanresources@helpside.com.