As discussed in our previous post, the road to successful employer branding begins within your organization. We’ll talk a bit more now about how your ROI greatly increases when your organization invests in workplace culture too.
Creating a high trust culture in employee-employer relations is vital to the ongoing development of a strong employer brand. When you get it right, the benefits are many:
– Better morale and stronger performance by employees
– Higher customer/client satisfaction
– Greater customer and employer brand recognition
– The attraction and retention of top talent
You can develop persuasive campaigns to attract talent, but if the new employee’s experience within your company does not live up to the expectations created by your messaging, they’ll feel let down and eventually will leave.
Check in on a regular basis
Frequently checking in with employees is important in order to monitor inaccurate assumptions management may be making about workplace culture. Instead of the typical once-a-year employee survey, implementing an employee Net Promoter System is a way to monitor on a more regular basis what makes employees loyal.
An employee NPS differs from a regular survey in a few ways:
Length: the shorter employee NPS surveys are less daunting to fill out and thus encourage employees to be more thorough with their answers.
Frequency: employee NPS surveys are distributed more often, which gives management a more up-to-date idea of worker satisfaction.
Speed of Action: instead of relying on a third party firm to analyze data, which can take weeks or months, in an employee NPS, emphasis is placed on sharing (anonymous) feedback as quickly as possible with supervisors and leaders.
Keep the lines of communication open
Less formal ways to achieve a high trust culture can come from management consistently communicating with employees. Creating opportunities for employees to connect, such as holding town halls or company update meetings with chances for anonymous, pre-submitted questions from workers to be answered, is one way to do this. Training team leaders to develop trusting relationships by taking an interest in employees as people also helps. Ask after their kids, parents, travel plans or home renovations, for example.
Of course, checking in on how they are doing at the office is also important, with questions like: What concerns and challenges are you facing right now? Or, what opportunities are available to you right now? Or simply, how can I support you? Posing these enquiries in a more empathetic way will deepen the relationship and give you a more accurate picture of how they are doing.
Lastly, ensure that there are roles within your HR team that are focused specifically on employee relations. These individuals should treat employees like customers and have proper processes and channels in place to address any employee concerns. It should be clear to employees who these team members are.
Good managers may make treating employees well seem natural, but installing a few formal methods of promoting good communication and support can further build a trusting culture, taking your employer brand to the next level.
About Blu Ivy Group
Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Blu Ivy Group’s mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces.