Your Company Culture is Affecting Your Employee Engagement

What Is Company Culture?

Simply put, company culture is the personality of a company. It defines the working environment for employees and includes a variety of elements like company mission, value, ethics, expectations, and goals.

Culture matters for employees because workers are more likely to enjoy their time at work and thrive when they fit in with the company culture. In fact, 13.5% of workers admit that misalignment with company culture will push them to accept another job offer (Ajilon). But when the culture is well defined and employees better understand what is expected of them and what they’re working towards they begin to feel more engaged.

Engaged Employees Are Critical For Your Organization’s Success

While being engaged at work is a positive for the employee, there are also a lot of benefits for the organization as well. Some of these benefits include:

Increased Productivity

-Engaged employees are 21% more productive

Employee Retention

-Disengaged employees are over 2x more likely to be actively looking for jobs

compared to engaged employees. Employee turnover on average, costs an

organization 20% of an employee’s salary (The number increases for higher level

employees), so increasing employee retention helps increase an organization’s

bottom line.

Increased Profits

-Investing 10% more into employee engagement can increase an organizations

profits by $2,400 per employee, per year, according to the Workplace Research

Foundation.

Not All Cultures Are Created Equal

While no culture is the same, no one culture is better than the other. It’s entirely dependent upon your organization and industry. Some types of corporate culture include:

Team First – Teamwork is encouraged, leaders are viewed more as mentors, and consensus is used to make decisions.

Elite – Companies are striving for innovation and only hire the best. Competition among employees is encouraged and failure to reach goals can lead to termination.

Conventional – There’s a clearly defined hierarchy, a dress code, and numbers-focused approach.

There are a number of other culture types, but determining which culture best suits your organization’s goals and industry will allow you to look for employees that best fit that culture. Once you’re able to clearly articulate your culture, you can begin to clearly outline behaviors and norms that are expected of employees, allowing them to feel connected, involved, and supported. In other words, they feel engaged.

From April 4, 2019