 It’s easy to understand why business leaders get excited about creating a great culture – the benefits are huge! Strong culture leads to great employee engagement. It's well documented that companies with better employee engagement enjoy oh-so-many dividends, including better productivity, innovation, customer experience, employee retention, profitability, safety and work quality. Not to mention that it’s a lot easier to recruit top talent in a tight labor market when your team is shouting from the rooftops about how amazing it is to work for you. However, culture isn’t a ‘once in a while’ thing, and it’s not like an adorable puppy you get for Christmas. Culture isn’t ‘cute when it’s new,’ and then just kind of a pain in the neck the rest of the year. Why not? Ummmm, please see above list of upsides – those are 365-days-a-year kinds of benefits! And, like that cute puppy, if your feed and water it properly, your culture will grow big and strong over time. Give it some love, and your culture will become your very best friend as a leader. Fortunately, there are lots of not-so-hard ways to nurture your culture. An easy place to start is with your Mission, Vision and Values statements – they’re kind of like your road map. Tell the truth: Do your Mission, Vision and Values statements live in a drawer somewhere, and yet your wonder why they’re not ‘working?’ It’s ok. These things happen. It’s easy to get back on track. Here are three top, easy and painless tips for using your Mission, Vision and Values to help you build and maintain an amazing culture. Spoiler alert! None of them include ping pong tables and beer:
Over time, your people will understand that ‘this is the way we do things around here,’ which is a strong starting point for building the culture you want – and need – to grow. There’s another big plus to consistently communicating your values; it actually makes your job as a leader easier. Just like the decision-making criteria described for employees, the same is true for you.
Just like your puppy doesn’t turn into a giant dog overnight, your values-driven culture also takes time to mature. The good news is, just like those daily trips to the dog park, the journey can be a whole lot of fun. Interested in diving deeper into your company's Mission, Vision and Values with someone who knows the ropes? Drop us a line! Want to get started right away? Click here to receive a free Kick Start Guide to creating your own Mission, Vision and Values statements!
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 Hmmm… You actually already have a job that keeps you pretty busy, and now, as your company has grown, someone (who shall remain nameless) has asked you to also pick up employee communication. They may also have called it employee engagement, or internal communications, or something that sort of sounds like that. The only problem is...you’re not quite sure where to start, and you’re not entirely sure you’ll know if you’ve been successful, and sometimes it all seems a little overwhelming, if you’re being honest… Employee Communications is a thing Fear not. The truth is that in larger companies, employee communications is actually a whole job unto itself. In fact, there are whole teams that do nothing but oversee employee communications. This is because how employees understand their role in a company — how what they do every day affects the bottom line — has a big impact on that bottom line itself. Think about when you’ve been new in a job, and haven’t really been entirely clear on what’s going on, how things work, or even what it is exactly that you’re supposed to be doing. When you don’t have that bigger picture, that broader context, you can’t perform at your best — it’s a frustrating feeling! Once you understand how all the pieces fit together, you can, to use a technical term, crush it. You do your job better, faster, smarter and with more energy and enthusiasm than you did when you were, well, kind of clueless. Employee Communication plays a big role in helping people crush it at work So, now you can start to see that employee communication is kind of a big deal. And that means that you have a big opportunity to be a total rock star at work. But wait, there’s more. Want to know specifically how employee communications affects your company’s bottom line? It has to do with the connection between employee communication and, what is often called employee engagement. Employee engagement is a much larger topic that we’ll address is future articles, but basically, it’s a way of measuring how much better and harder someone is willing to work. That may sound kind of transactional at first, but here’s the thing -- employee engagement is linked to some big ways that companies either make or lose money when it comes to their people, including:
So you can see why companies take employee communication (and engagement) seriously as they grow. However, for smaller businesses, it’s not usually feasible to have a dedicated person doing this role, which is where you come in. See? Total rock star opportunity. There’s something else though — it’s not just about the productivity and the profit. We spend a lot of our lives at work, and employee communication and engagement just makes that time better. Helping people thrive at work, and contributing to a great company culture is a very important role, and one that hopefully, by now seems more like fun, and less like just. More. work. In this series of articles, we’ll demystify the basics of employee communication, and share some ‘tricks of the trade’ so that you can feel confident and enthusiastic in helping your company to be a better, stronger, happier place to work. Have questions? Concerns? A persistent, prickly feeling of panic that keeps you up at night? Fear not; this is a safe space. You can either ask them in the comments, or just email us directly. We’re here to help. |
AuthorVictoria Dew is the Founder and CEO of Dewpoint Communications. Archives
January 2019
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