employees Archives

Scaling Your Culture While Keeping Employees Engaged

Max Goldenberg July 27, 2022

When your organization is growing fast, it’s an exciting thing! New clients, new opportunities, new employees – and often new culture brought with them as your organization adapts. But fast-paced growth also comes with its own set of unique challenges; as organizations become bigger and more difficult to manage, more apathetic employees can easily dilute an energetic company culture, tanking employee engagement – and morale with it. Keeping an increasingly large roster of unique employees actively engaged in company culture is a huge challenge. For a growing enterprise, strong, positive cultures are vital for productivity and retention; so you’ll have to tackle the daunting task of scaling culture.

Bring New Employees Into The Conversation

Organizations of any size, even those with codified values, are filled with unspoken norms. These small quirks and daily standards can’t be communicated in onboardings, but they form the most basic building-block of culture. It’s essential that new employees feel a part of these minor daily routines! An excellent way of achieving this is through a monthly meeting where newer employees can discuss the company’s culture. Alternatively, you can assign newer employees a veteran buddy to talk candidly about your ins and outs.

Use Benefits Levers To Provide A Universally Attractive Foundation

Certain traditions, such as monthly gatherings of all staff, may become logistically unfeasible as your organization grows. To replace them, you can leverage digital tools to instead offer benefits with universal appeal. While attractive benefits are no replacement for bottom-up culture, using levers like PerkSpot’s discount program can help engage growing cultures by giving new employees attractive reasons to approach the office with the same enthusiasm of their veteran colleagues.

Be Flexible to New Quirks

With any influx of new employees, or even just a growing scope of your enterprise, it’s important to remember that the organization is never going to be exactly the same as it was – and that’s okay. Scaling your culture is the perfect time to codify your organization’s core values. You’ve got the unique chance now to really identify what makes your culture strong and successful. These core values should be your guiding torch to handling company-wide decisions and day-to-day interactions alike. With confidence in your example-setting, you can help maintain your organization’s positive cultural traits while also allowing new employees to add a piece of their own to the tapestry of your workspace.

Find Ways For Leadership To Engage Organically

It’s true that it’s a bit more difficult to do water-cooler talk over Zoom. Still, whether remote or in-person, it’s important that your organization’s leadership is accessible and engaged. Encouraging lower-pressure get-togethers, lunches, or similar events for teams or individual offices creates an environment where teams and leadership can come closer together. It’s also the perfect setting to reinforce a positive organizational culture!

Growing any organization is an exciting and fast-paced time to be involved, but it’s also a high-pressure environment. While one side of ensuring employee engagement is to provide enjoyable interaction opportunities, the other is to prevent burnout and disengagement through proper support and resources. As long as you can supply both sides of that equation to your employees, old and new, you’ll find any sort of cultural transition a breeze.

Dealing with Burnout as an HR Professional

Max Goldenberg April 7, 2022

In today’s competitive candidate market, life as an HR professional has never been quite so exhausting. Being forced to chase after candidates in the age of work from home and tremendous employee freedom has meant a difficult balancing act between providing appealing, top-quality benefits, managing cost efficiency, and negotiating employee concerns – all while dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic. It’s no wonder that burnout is skyrocketing at HR departments all over the country – but there is a better way. And with World Health Day officially starting today on April 7th, there’s never been a better time to help your department get physically and mentally healthy!

42% of Human Resources teams report feeling overburdened with projects and responsibilities. And on one hand, this is something that should be taken up with management; when HR teams are simply too small or too overworked, there needs to be discussion about expanding Human Resources or offloading responsibilities. But a second, equally important aspect of this equation is learning to deal with burnout individually. And for that, we should first understand what “burnout” really means.

When we talk about burnout, we’re talking about the feelings of dread and exhaustion that rise up when we’re forced to do demanding, repetitive work. It’s the sense of doing tasks purely out of obligation, no longer believing they have any real impact. And the first step in re-gaining your passion is to re-gain control over your schedule.

Set Boundaries

The first step of assessing burnout is setting boundaries. It’s important both personally and professionally to be able to step away from work communications; for instance, turning off Slack and email past six-o-clock. Sticking to a routine that clearly separates work from life is fundamental to having a good work-life balance. Even if you’re on-call for emergencies, emergency should never mean every night, and if they are, then that’s a conversation you need to have with management.

Build Strong Communication Habits

Fostering good communication with management and the executive team at your workplace is another important aspect of managing burnout. That’s because burnout isn’t all about stress, but also lacking a sense of agency and value in what you do. When you feel you’re doing “meaningless” work, or don’t have control over your own schedule, burnout is far more intense. Prioritizing valuable work and setting firm boundaries on your own schedule is often a necessary step in managing burnout.

Break your Routines

More than boundaries, you’ll also want to start breaking your routines. While routines can provide a comforting sense of normalcy in our lives, they can also become trapping. If you notice you’re performing the same tasks in the same way over and over again, then it’s time to find something new. Maybe it’s as simple as switching up your morning routine, maybe it’s taking a new route around town, or maybe it’s shifting into a new aspect of your department’s operations.

Discover Personal Stress Management Solutions

Finally, there’s the most traditional (but still very important!) part of dealing with burnout – personal stress management. Exercise and meditation are the two most common methods, but it’s important to find what works for you; whether it’s walking your dog, paddling down canoe trails, or simply taking five dedicated minutes to focus. By understanding your stress and mentally moving on, you can take control back from your emotions.

Properly managing burnout requires breaking negative feedback loops, getting excited about work, and learning to manage stress. While that’ll require a lot of personal initiative, there are some tools that can help manage burnout stress.

One area you can cut down on stressful micromanagement is with PerkSpot’s single stop benefits platform, which offers countless diverse benefits for your diverse employees. With a suite of discounts at their fingertips, PerkSpot provides employees with the resources they need to cope with stress and burnout – whether it’s deals on ergonomic office chairs and gym memberships or complete getaway vacations to exotic destinations at a discount, schedule a demo today to learn more about the ways that PerkSpot can be a powerful burnout-burning resource for your organization this World Health Day.

Provide All Things Travel Affordably in One Place

Courtney Shipshock March 11, 2022

For many of us, travel is a part of our everyday life. Whether it be a planned vacation, a business trip, or a journey to see family, traveling isn’t going anywhere. The dreadful part of traveling? The expenses. With employees showing an increased interest in alternative benefits, offer an option that goes the extra mile, providing all things travel affordably in one place.

Why Travel Is Import For Employees

Boosts Productivity

Time spent away from an employee’s normal working environment boosts productivity and morale, equips employees with management skills, benefits the job market, and is good for overall health.

Company Loyalty Improves

Retention is an ongoing concern amongst businesses. Travel allows employees to take the needed time to rest, visit their loved ones, and return less stressed. Studies have shown that when employees return from holidays, they are happier for weeks afterward. Maintaining a happy workforce will help maintain employees long term.

Improves Health

Traveling has been shown to improve health, both mentally and physically. According to Forbes, taking vacations can lower men’s risk of death by 21 percent and mortality from cardiovascular disease by 32 percent. Not only that, but travel has been linked to stress reduction and can alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Offer Employees Savings On The Necessities

We’ve covered why travel is important, but what’s next? As we know, a lot can go into planning a successful journey. Packing luggage, buying airfare, confirming reservations, and securing rental vehicles are just a few of the necessary boxes that need to be checked prior to departure. With a discount program, you can offer your employees savings on all of the necessities in one, easily accessible portal.

Meet PerkSpot’s Travel Discount Center

One of the unique benefits that is part of partnering with PerkSpot is access to the Travel Discount Center. Within the portal, employees can search destinations and access exclusive savings on hotels, flights, rental cars, and cruises worldwide. In addition to transportation and lodging, PerkSpot provides your employees with steep savings on luggage, entertainment, restaurants and more.

Traveling has a variety of benefits but comes with a cost. Help your employees affordably travel with ease with an employee discount program. Interested in learning more about the value these programs provide? Check out our e-book and get in touch with us!

The Importance of Employee Appreciation Day

Max Goldenberg March 4, 2022

Employee Appreciation Day is finally here, and we’re excited to share some advice on making the day special for your employees!

Make no mistake – Employee morale is crucial to the success of your business, regardless of industry. That’s why Employee Appreciation Day is so important, serving as a yearly reminder to treat employees with respect for their hard work and build up the people that make your business special. But if you missed it this year, don’t fret! Employee appreciation is a year-long commitment, not a single-day celebration; it’s never too late to show your employees how much they matter to you. But how important is showing appreciation to employees, when you get right down to the numbers?

Incredibly. Employees who feel appreciated within their organization consistently work harder and more efficiently, both reporting and recording higher returns that scale proportionally to their sense of value in the office. According to the American Psychological Association, feelings of value directly translate into higher productivity, regardless of associated industry. A sense of being valued within the business also has a positive impact on employee wellbeing more broadly, with those who feel valued reporting higher levels of work-life balance and employment satisfaction, even with all other relevant factors kept static.

How does Employee Appreciation affect turnover?

There’s good evidence that employee appreciation is the most important, or at least one of the most important factors in employee retention. A study from the Harvard School of Business found equity, recognition of achievement, and a sense of camaraderie as the three key elements of ensuring high employee motivation, all of which are strongly tied to a sense of employees feeling valued and appreciated. These factors directly correlate to rate of retention.

Considering positive workplace culture increases both productivity and employee retention, it’s easy to see how cultivating a feeling of appreciation amongst employees can lead to direct, significant benefits for your business. Most importantly of all, however, is that employee appreciation cultivates a generally positive work environment, which, in turn, creates a positive feedback loop that encourages good work culture. When employees feel comfortable and safe with their co-workers and managers, every measurable aspect of their work (and indeed often their lives outside of work) significantly improves. While an honest and positive environment also serves as a safeguard against negativity and factionalization that can turn workspaces hostile and severely impact employee morale, job satisfaction, productivity, and retention.

Using Employee Appreciation Day to build a Healthy Work Culture

With all this in mind, making employee appreciation day a part of your workplace schedule can be a great way to show your employees that you care. But ultimately, it’s the little things adding up that build a conducive and healthy atmosphere – even down to simple little matters like remembering to say thanks after an employee turns in something they’ve worked hard on. Small trinkets and signs of appreciation can go an incredibly long way. It’s rarely the dollar value that matters, but instead the fact that you’re putting in thought to show you care.

PerkSpot can help make recognizing your employees easy, giving you a wide selection of customized gifts to make your employee’s days a little brighter – but from gift-giving to a simple heartfelt thank-you, there’s any number of ways to show you care about your employees. How you choose to foster a positive work environment is up to you, but both your employees and your bottom line will thank you for doing so!

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