Company culture is moving to the forefront of trending New Year’s resolutions this year. Whether you’re looking to incorporate new talent acquisition, improve recruitment, or revamp your human resource management, corporate culture is proving to have a bigger impact on the way businesses are run. A great way to enhance or renew your corporate culture is to take advantage of the new year motivation and momentum by incorporating innovative employee engagement initiatives.

Human Resource Management. Implementing proper human resource management (HRM) strategies and software can assist in creating, sustaining, and boosting employee engagement. From applicant tracking and onboarding to performance management and continued training, businesses need to develop or incorporate a HRM system that best suits their needs. HRM provides critical insight to employee engagement and the potential causes for why it fluxes. Continually and consistently evaluating potential causes and preparing adequate resolutions allows you to be one step ahead of any future problems or flux in employee engagement issues.

Recruitment. One important concept to incorporate into your recruiting methods is to ensure your company has unique benefits, such as telecommuting, identity theft protection, car rental rewards programs, etc., that showcase you as a viable competitor in your industry. Another key factor to consider are recruiting trends. It is imperative to remain competent and aligned with recruitment styles (i.e., cold calls, social media, in-person), platforms (i.e., website, social media, chatbots), and other trends (i.e., artificial intelligence, automation) to guarantee your reputation as an innovative and robust industry leader.

Employee Retention. A majority of the issues surrounding employee retention deal with company culture and/or the benefits offered. While there can be other factors at play that affect employee retention, it is important to remember that employees are often influenced by workplace environment. Catering work lunches, team or department meetings and trainings that include fun team building exercises, work-related or work-endorsed events are all great opportunities to build a more engaging group and employee relations, leading to increased employee retention. Employee benefits like 401(K), telecommuting or flexible work arrangements, paid maternity leave, paid sick leave, and other similar benefits are all influential perks to employee retention.

There are three ^{questions [1]} you can ask yourself to evaluate whether or not your employees are engaged:

Are employees engaging in meaningful work?
What part of the job do they enjoy most? Are they able to obtain such enjoyment through their current work projects? For example, someone who works in a nonprofit sector might define “meaningful work” as helping someone get back on their feet. If they are stuck behind a desk all day doing administrative tasks that don’t directly impact the person struggling, they may disengage with the work.

Do employees feel they are in a “safe place” to voice their opinions without fear of retaliation or judgment?
This is a great place for HR professionals to lay out explicit expectations for employees. Through clearly stated expectations, employees cannot argue with such guidelines. In setting expectations, an HR professional may state that the company holds an open-door policy where people may report issues without retaliation, as well as explicit repercussions for employees who retaliate. Incorporating team-building activities can foster camaraderie between employees and open the workplace to honest, respectful conversations that can lead to peaceful resolutions.

Are employees able to express themselves freely?
Again, this is the ideal place for HR professionals to step in and set forth established employee expectations and guidelines. These guidelines should outline unacceptable behaviors, such as retaliation, harassment, and other inappropriate behavior that may lead others to feel uncomfortable or unaccepted in the workplace.

These questions can oftentimes lead you to locate, remedy, and resolve issues that have long affected your corporate culture. Need help with a starting point? Contact VensureHR. We offer an extensive suite of human resource management, talent acquisition, and talent recruitment strategies that can effectively improve engagement and thus, create a healthy company culture.

^[1] https://www.hrexchangenetwork.com/employee-engagement/articles/employee-engagement-everything-you-need-to-know