The way a company contributes to the well-being of its employees is one measure of its corporate social responsibility. Building a company that is focused on the health of its employees is critical to developing positive workplace culture.

In general, CSR measurements on worker relations evaluate compensation and benefits; training and professional development; health and safety of workers; and job flexibility.

At Bohlsen Group, we have considered these core measurements and have sought to go above and beyond by:

  • Offering more PTO and flexible schedules than our competitors
  • Creating independent and shared continuing education and volunteering policies
  • Encouraging healthy habits that lead to overall wellness
  • Allowing staff to work from home on Mondays
  • Developing a comfortable and collaborative physical work space

Since employees’ whole-life satisfaction steadily increases as more core needs are met at work, companies are becoming more and more conscious of creating a workplace culture that can recruit and retain team members. We submit an annual survey to both staff and clients to obtain input.

Studies show that the majority of workers (53%) say that they want a job where they can “make an impact”

Wanting to make an impact is even more important for the younger generation, as this number rises to a staggering 88% for millennials.

By 2020, half of the work force is expected to be millennials. I think it’s fair to say that not considering the well-being of employees, as well as your company’s mission and purpose, could harm a company.

Data shows that companies with unsupportive cultures and poor strategic alignment significantly underperform their competitors. In the past three years, 42% of non-purpose-led companies showed a drop in revenue, while 85% of purpose-led companies showed positive growth.

None of this data keeps me up at night, but it certainly makes me very thoughtful about how Bohlsen Group can merge its culture with its mission to create a business that I feel is staged for success now and into the future.

The best way to align the two lies in a greater understanding of the cultural attributes that any given company needs to foster and communicate. These can also be described as core values.

Even the most successful companies concede the difficulty in aligning culture and strategy. But, some known facts:

  • Maintaining a successful culture and strategic alignment takes careful attention and hard work.
  • Without consistency, persistence and behind-the-scenes encouragement, successful culture and strategic alignment is not possible.
  • Executives have an inflated sense of their workplace culture and strategic alignment understanding when compared to employees.
  • If not embraced and its importance not communicated from the top down, a company will not be able to manage alignment.

“Inspired” employees generate 225% of the productivity that employees who are merely “satisfied” do. And, employees who find meaning in their work report being 2.8 times more likely to stay with their organizations.

To get started creating an envied workplace that aligns with your strategic plan:

Ensure you have leadership buy-in.

My executive management team and I discuss this weekly.

Audit current operations.

A great tool for ensuring you think of everything, take a look at this free assessment tool: http://bimpactassessment.net/bcorporation

You don’t have to be a B Corp to have a strong social responsibility program, but this tool is free and pretty awesome to gauge against companies with great CSR programs.

Engage the staff and clients in the discussion.

You might be surprised what matters to them.

Know your core values.

Assess what stays and goes based on resources, capacity, motivators and company’s core values. Every company is different and should create an authentic, applicable program.

Set achievable goals to activate the plan’s full potential.

You can’t do everything, and you can build on initiatives year over year.

Measure outcomes and successes.

You will want to do this so that you can tweak accordingly, and don’t be shy about telling your impactful stories.

If a robust workplace culture leads to employee loyalty, recruitment and retention, increased profits and higher productivity, why wouldn’t you make this one of the most important considerations for your organization?

 NOTE: Many of the statistics mentioned in this article were pulled from the September/October 2017 issue of Conscious Company Magazine.