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2 Simple Strategies to Improve Office Culture

2 Simple Strategies to Improve Office Culture

by | Feb 26, 2019 | Blog

2 simple strategies to improve office culture. Poor company culture is one of the main reasons employees look for new job opportunities. Improve workplace culture and boost job satisfaction and retention in the process.

8 in 10 employees are likely to search for a new job after just one bad day at work, according to a study by Addison Group, a professional services and staffing firm.

Over 80 percent of workers say poor office culture is the main reason they would look for new job opportunities.

“With the job market being as competitive as it is, those who are currently employed know they can go elsewhere to find something better if they aren’t happy with their current situation,” said Tom Moran, CEO of Addison Group.

“We all have our good and bad days, but what employers can control is how they are treating and interacting with employees, how much they’re investing in their career progression plans, and how they are choosing to accurately match their salary and benefits packages to mirror what their employees want.”

Where Do Office Culture Problems Start?

Research by PwC identified the tones set by the executive team and middle management as the primary drivers of poor workplace cultures. More than 60 percent of directors use gut feelings to evaluate company culture, but only 30 percent of directors believe it to be a useful approach. Hearing from employees through employee engagement survey results, exit interview debriefs, or 360-degree feedback results for executives are the most useful metrics for evaluating office culture.

2 Strategies to Improve Office Culture

Consider Office Culture Fit When Hiring

When new employees are hired there’s an inevitable shift in the company culture as everyone adjusts. Certain personalities work well together and others simply don’t. It’s impossible to determine with certainty whether or not a new hire will be a good fit, but there are a few ways employers can evaluate candidates during the interview process. For example, by including questions for them from the team, or by having candidates spend a few minutes conversing with their potential workers as a part of their interview, employers can get a snapshot of how they might interact on the job.

Limit Focus on Short-Term Results

Excessive focus on short-term performance and hitting performance targets in compensations plans can contribute to poor company culture, according to PwC. Employees can feel pressured and overwhelmed when there’s an excessive focus on short-term performance, lowering their job satisfaction, risking burnout, and potentially causing them to look for other job opportunities. Short-term results are valuable, but zooming out a bit might be a better strategy if it means improving long-term retention.

More on Improving Office Culture:

10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Office Culture

You Need to Focus on Improving Retention. Here’s How:

Is Rehiring a Former Employee a Good Idea?

How to Improve Gender Diversity in the Workplace

How to Make Traditional Work Better for Freelancers

Hiring Employees with Criminal Backgrounds: What You Need to Know

Hiring Employees with Criminal Backgrounds: What You Need to Know

by | Feb 6, 2019 | Blog

Hiring employees with criminal backgrounds: what you need to know. More than 650,000 people are released from prison each year and companies are committing to changing recruiting practices to include opportunities for those with criminal backgrounds.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently launched Getting Talent Back to Work, a national pledge for business leaders to commit to giving opportunities to qualified people with criminal backgrounds. It follows January’s passing of the First Step Act, which improves rehabilitation and re-entry opportunities for the more than 650,000 people released from prison each year.

“This is a group we, as business leaders, cannot afford to overlook as 1 in 3 adults in the United States currently has a criminal background,” said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., CEO of SHRM. “Not only is it the right thing to do—to give a deserving person a second chance—but it is becoming imperative as businesses continue to experience recruiting difficulty at an alarming rate.”

More than 80 percent of hiring managers indicated workers with a criminal background are a high-quality hire equal to or even more effective than those without a criminal history, according to research by SHRM and the Charles Koch Institute. More than 70 percent of those same hiring managers found extreme value hiring those with a criminal background because of diminished costs associated with hiring from within that population, as well as mitigating risk to effective operations.

Hiring managers are able to see beyond the organizational benefits of hiring people with a criminal background and point out larger societal benefits, like the opportunity to improve the community around them and the intrinsic value of giving people second chances at employment.

Associations and companies representing more than 60 percent of the U.S. workforce have already joined SHRM in taking the Getting Talent Back to Work pledge. Competition for talent is tight and employers can’t afford to overlook a third of the population because they have criminal backgrounds. A strong recruiting process will ensure only the most qualified candidates from a truly diverse pool, regardless of background, are considered for open positions.

“Our nation just took a major first step toward helping people who want an opportunity to transform their lives—now we’re pledging to take the next step,” said Mark Holden, senior vice president and general counsel of Koch Industries. “Koch is incredibly proud to offer second chances to qualified people with a criminal record and now, thanks to SHRM, more businesses will have the tools needed to hire these individuals. By taking this next step, we can create stronger families, a more robust workforce, and safer communities for all.”

How to Improve Gender Diversity in the Workplace

How to Improve Gender Diversity in the Workplace

by | Nov 19, 2018 | Blog

How can employers improve gender diversity in the workplace? It starts with tracking representation and setting goals for diversity when hiring and promoting employees.

“Progress for women isn’t just slow― it’s stalled,” reads the alarming introduction to LeanIn’s latest report, Women in the Workplace 2018. In the three years they’ve been studying the issue, corporate America has made almost no progress in how women fare.

Hiring is one of biggest drivers of gender representation in the workplace and automated recruitment systems aren’t helping: Even machine learning algorithms are gender biased because what they search for in potential hires is based on historic data, which in most cases favors male candidates.

Women are less likely to be hired at the manager level and they’re far less likely to be promoted into management positions. LeanIn’s research shows for every 100 men promoted to manager, there are less than 80 women promoted. As a result, more than 60 percent of men hold managerial positions compared to less than 40 percent of women.

The study offers “performance bias” as a potential explanation to early gaps in hiring and promoting women. Research on “performance bias” found men are often hired and promoted based on their potential, while women are often hired and promoted based on their track record. “One thing I’ve become used to is having to prove myself constantly, over and over. It’s tiring, and unfortunately, it hasn’t changed a whole lot as I’ve become more senior,” says a Latina woman who is a senior executive with 4 years at the company.

Although it’s commonly thought that women are underrepresented in management because they leave to focus on family, LeanIn found that women and men leave their jobs in similar numbers. Most men and women plan to stay in the workforce when they leave their company. Less than 5 percent of women plan to leave the workforce to focus on family.

If companies start hiring and promoting women and men to manager at equal rates, the report estimates that the U.S. will get close to parity in management over the next 10 years. If employers continue hiring and promoting women at current rates, the number of women in management will increase by just one percentage point over the same ten years.

The underrepresentation of women in uppermanagement is so common it’s normalized. A director recalled a time when she pressed a button to the executive office and someone in the elevator pointed out what floor the interns were on, assuming she was mistaken. A lawyer remembered walking into negotiations she was leading and an older man from the company asked her to take meeting notes.

Most companies say they’re highly committed to gender and racial diversity, but that runs counter to LeanIn’s research on the issue. Less than half of companies track representation and set targets to reach gender and racial diversity. Achieving gender and racial diversity requires more than lip service, it requires planning and careful consideration at each level.

Leaders at all levels need to, well, take the lead. In order to do that they need to understand the problem, receive training to help solve it and be held accountable for making consistent progress towards gender and racial diversity. It’s also up to leadership to foster an inclusive and respectful culture by developing guidelines supported by a clear reporting process and swift consequences for violations.  

“Closing the corporate gender gap isn’t a side issue. It’s an economic necessity. Programs and policies designed to reduce bias and ensure fairness don’t just benefit women. They benefit everyone,” the report’s conclusion reads.