Over the past several weeks, I have taken a close look at three key components needed for successful employee engagement. Today, I will be highlighting the third, and in my opinion, most essential component – culture. The general belief is that a strong corporate culture is the direct result of high employee engagement. While this is true, building an environment of engaged, motivated employees is easier said than done.
Culture is not a standalone function. As I noted in my previous posts, it is heavily impacted by accountability, benefits and other workplace influences. Therefore, organizations must make it a priority to put in place a solid structure that can build and support an environment that fosters employee happiness and facilitates trusting, collaborative relationships between colleagues.
Here are 3 culture hacks that can help create an organizational culture that supports and sustains employee engagement:
- Recognize wins: A successful rewards and/or recognition program must become an integral part of a company’s culture, rather than just a tool used by a select few leaders and HR professionals. There are excellent examples of peer-to-peer recognition programs and other types of group rewards that can help drive critical elements of positive culture such as teamwork, collaboration and creativity. Learn more about rewarding and retaining your employees through TicketsatWork Corporate Rewards & Incentives.
- Celebrate failures: It is easy to reward successful events, but we also need to recognize unsuccessful ones. To be clear, we shouldn’t celebrate every failure – I’m looking at you, compliance miscues or code of conduct breaches. This hack, on the other hand, revolves around the celebration of ideas that were particularly innovative or challenged the status quo. Sometimes, however, these failed ideas might have been a bit too audacious or were just not feasible at the time. The organization can learn from these types of failures to make future initiatives better or they can be tabled for a launch down the road when the time is right. Creating a culture of innovation and positive risk-taking is the only way an organization is able to move forward and stay ahead of the curve.
- Build trust by having fun: An open and transparent line of communication between employees and management will help establish trust at work. It will also help create a collaborative environment that, in turn, can produce improved problem solving and facilitate new or strengthened professional relationships. When it comes to having fun, simply scheduling a happy hour every other week or stuffing a ping pong table into a meeting room does not automatically mean your employees will enjoy themselves or build effective teamwork. Rather, you simply need to allow flexibility in the day so that organic fun can occur and a culture of engagement can be established.
What are some of the ways your company builds a culture of engagement? Let us know using the hashtag #FunAtWork on Twitter or get started today with Corporate Rewards and Incentives!
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