How To Effectively Create A Safe And Engaging Workplace Culture

Creating a safe and engaging workplace culture for all current and future employees is the most effective way to successfully attract, retain, develop and engage top talent.

It is understood that a workplace culture cannot be completely perfect for everyone. The company culture, however, does need to be comfortable for all current and potential employees. This level of comfort for all is much more desirable than a company culture that aims to be a perfect fit for the majority, as this is a great way to lose current employees that fall into the minority and to severely narrow your hiring window in the future.

Forming a safe and engaging work space requires a combination of many factors, but in my belief, there are six simple steps that can be taken to develop a healthy company culture that should appeal to all and allow your employees to work and developed comfortably in a motivating and positive environment. The six steps are Aims & Objectives, Success, Appreciation, Opportunities, Leadership and Personal Wellbeing.

1.       Connect your employees to the aims and objectives of the company. It is very important to help your employees connect to and personalise the organisation’s aims and objectives, as this will motivate them efficiently to feel personally driven to reach for these goals.  This will make your employees more effective but it should also allow them to feel more fulfilled by their role as they will be working to achieve the company’s goals not because they must but because they are the employees’ combined goals. Connecting your current employees to the company’s goals clearly helps with retaining, developing and engaging talent and this is turn will help attract top talent.

2.       Connecting an employee’s individual successes to the company as a whole is an important step in creating a safe and engaging workplace culture for all current and future employees. If an employee feels that their successes are the company’s and vice versa, they will feel more connected to company’s aims and objective and will feel personally motivated to successfully meet these aims. This will make the employees engage more with the business and the rest of the teams trying to meet the company goals. As the company with the help of all the individual employees meet their aims, the employee will develop their confidence and feel more engaged and self-assured when trying to meet their future goals.

3.       Feeling appreciated in the work place for the work you are doing is an important part of feeling engaged and gives people the confident to effectively develop their skills. If an employee does not feel important, valued or heard, they are unlikely to remain in their position for very long, so it is vital that all employees are listened to and give the recognition and appreciation that they deserve. Feeling appreciated will also connect your employees to the company and their fellow employees and is likely to make them feel more motivated.

4.       You need to provide opportunities if you want your current employees to remain engaged and continue to develop new skills. Challenges and new opportunities are needed to keep an employee engaged. It is also important to allow for the possibility of promotion within the company, this will give the employee something within the business to reach for and by doing so, cause them to become more engaged in developing their current skill and learn the new skills required for the role. By giving the employee a higher role within the company to reach for, you are also lowering the likelihood of them leaving the business for an outside promotion.

5.       Leadership is about more than just giving orders. It is about directing and motivating; this is vital in creating a safe and engaging workplace culture. An effective way to keep employees engaged in the businesses goals is to form a leadership or mentoring system that helps guide the employees through their individual development through and for the company. A leadership system based on guidance and motivation will be very effective in retaining and attracting the top talent.

6.       The last step in the six-step plan is that you must value all your employees as individuals and remember to acknowledge their wellbeing outside of the business. This final step is perhaps the most obvious, but it is a step that if missed will massively lower your talent attraction and retention rates. It is very important to pay attention to the individual’s life outside of work and make allowances for and show interest in medical, financial or family issues while still maintaining a professional air. This is very important as not showing that you value your employee’s well-being, will severely lower your employees self-value and engagement within the company.

If you follow and maintain these six seemingly simple steps with all your employees, you will create a safe and engaging workplace for all and create a team that will work together to fulfil the company’s goals. This will boost your efficiency and certainly help you retain, develop and engage your current employees. This will in turn help you to attract the top talent, as most people will want to work in a place where their current employees feel safe and fully engaged.