A good company culture goes hand-in-hand with employee engagement and businesses are realising how investing in the working environment can result in a myriad of benefits.
As generations and societies change, a good company culture is becoming ever more important in attracting and retaining new employees. Although businesses are increasingly aware of this, how is a good working environment actually created?
Enter St.Louis-based Bonfyre, the first workplace culture platform helping companies create a better corporate culture, and they’ve definitely got their rose-tinted designer glasses on.
“Our mission is to deliver technology to create a world where everyone loves their job,” the company declares on its website.
Bonfyre uses a variety of different ways to push companies to invest in their company culture. Creative communication strategies, relationship building and employee recognition are just a few of the tools in their software that help improve the engagement, retention and performance of those within the company.
The company’s CEO, Mark Sawyier wrote a blog post on the site called ‘5 emotional constructs that impact workplace engagement’, in which he earmarks trust, altruism, happiness, belonging, and achievement as indispensable elements. This is proof as to how much workplace culture has changed, as in the past worker’s emotional well-being wasn’t a company’s responsibility.
Millennials and startups have had a huge impact on the way a company builds relationships with its staff. The Association for Talent Development website states that company culture is one of the biggest concerns in choosing a job for millennials, and there are many reasons behind this.
First of all, millennials are no strangers to change. As a generation, they are more likely to travel and less likely to be loyal to a company. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average young adult has had an average of 6.2 jobs by the age of 26 and the idea of having the same job for 30 years strikes fear into the hearts of many twenty-somethings. A SHRM article reported a study where a third of 1000 respondents said that they had left a job within six months of starting it. A good company culture is more likely to attract and, more importantly, retain employees.
Another factor is that this generation is made up of digital natives, masters of social media and emojis. Informal communication and personal relationships are the norms for them and they want to see this reflected in their relationship with the product and with the company itself. Cue trainers and sweatpants being worn during a casual ping pong game with the CEO, before crashing onto the beanbag to share some products on Instagram.
Linking back to both of these ideas, along with Sawyier’s five emotional constructs is that often potential millennial employees are alone, far from friends and family that they left behind to ‘find themselves.’ They are looking for a job that can double up as a community, a safe environment where they are treated as an individual and their ideas are valued. This also helps productivity, as employee engagement website Tinypulse reported that only 28% of employees with no work friends were engaged in their job, as opposed to 69% of those with 25 or more friends.
And finally, YOLO. With retirement becoming an ever-distant pipe dream for millennials, who seem to be expected to work into the grave, why not choose a job that you enjoy turning up to?
However, pandering to millennials is not the only reason to invest in a strong company culture. Human resource website HRdrive states that, along with the rise of the #Metoo movement, there is a strong urge to create socially responsible workplaces that look out for employees and don’t allow a harassment culture to persist.
Pew Research reported that Millennials are now the largest generation in the US workforce and. with their high company culture expectations, Bonfyre will help many businesses become more attractive to potential employees and create a more engaged and productive workforce.
