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2018 The Year of Change for Employers

Definition of change

Your Employees are your Company’s Most Valuable Asset!

Who or what is the most valuable asset (MVA) of your company? Employees should be considered the MVA of every organization. Without MVA’s how will your company meet the needs and demands of your customers?

The importance of retaining your MVA’s and reducing turnover is recommended to be the highest priority for your company this upcoming year. You have most likely experienced throughout 2017, the challenges of finding and retaining top talent within your company. Determining why employees are leaving your company and what attracts employees to your company is important to determine. No different than gearing your marketing towards specific industries or segments.

Some recommendations for uncovering what makes your employees tick or be ticked off:

  1. Employee Onboarding – Evaluate the onboarding process you are currently using. Investing time with a new employee on their first day leaves a lasting impression.
  2. Compensation Analysis – Have a compensation analysis done for all positions within your organization. Due to the recession, many companies put a hold on performance evaluations and increases due to financial restraints. Coming out of the financial stresses, many businesses have reinstated the Performance Appraisal and Salary Increases. The challenge here is, the value of duties and responsibilities has changed since 2008 and offering a minimal increase following years of no increase and no communication about performance may be insulting to employees.
  3. Implement Stay Interviews – The exit interview is not the best time to find out what your company can do to keep employees from leaving, by then, it’s too late.  It’s best to interview employees every 3-6 months to give them the opportunity to discuss what they like and don’t like about their current position, it gives the company time to address change and can help reduce employee turnover.
  4. Employee Surveys – Survey current employees to determine why they stay with your company and what will motivate them to make a move.
  5. Work-Life Balance – Evaluate the programs offered to employees to assist them with balancing work demands and life demands. Considering flexible work schedules and telecommuting are some options to consider.
  6. Culture – Is your work culture adaptable and acceptable to various generations throughout your workforce? Workplace Culture is the character and personality of your organization and is important for the organization as it directly impacts the ability to attract and retain talent.
  7. Diversity in the Workplace – Diversity is important because it introduces new ideas and adds to the workplace culture, it also increases employee morale and causes employees to work more effectively and efficiently.
  8. Mentors for Generational Gaps – In order for baby boomers to retire our millennials need to learn what makes “the other generations” stay with a company for extended periods of time. Who better to learn about work ethic, dedication, and respect from but our existing generation. Developing a mentoring program is a great tool to educate employees about work ethic and responsibilities while providing value to the baby boomers who don’t want to retire because they believe no one will respect the job and/or company like they do.
  9. Management Training – Promoting employees to management positions without providing them with the necessary tools and training is a recipe for disaster. Invest in helping your employees to be successful instead of leading them to think they are just filling a void.

Inclusion–Workplace Diversity

If you’ve ever heard of the phrase, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” then you should also heed the same advice when it comes to the diversity of your workplace.  Put the future of your company in the hands of employees of all different types as companies need a wide array of skills, life experiences, and personality traits in order to succeed.

Work place diversity refers to the variety of differences between people in an organization.  Differences can include: race, gender, ethnicity, age, personality, cognitive style, education, background, etc.

Benefits

Diversity has increased significantly over the years so embracing diversity and realizing its benefits can help the success and competitiveness of your business.  Your business can hope to gain increased adaptability, a broader range of services, a variety of viewpoints, and more effective execution of duties.

Individuals perceive things differently from one another, and even more so when they come from different backgrounds and cultures.  When there are comfortable relations, the communication of various points of view provides a larger pool of ideas which your business can draw from to meet business strategy needs, as well as customer needs more efficiently.  Speaking of experiences, when you have a diversified workplace, that gives your company an arsenal of new languages, cultural understanding, and more that will allow your company to expand your services to customers and clients on a global scale.

Business that employ a diverse workforce are also able to supply a greater variety of solutions to problems as they bring individual talents as well as experiences when suggesting flexible solutions that can adapt to fluctuating markets and customer demands.  All of these things considered, employees will be inspired to perform at a higher degree of ability, thus strategies can be executed resulting in increased productivity, profit, and return on investment.

Workplace diversity has increased significantly over the years--embracing diversity and realizing its benefits can help your business compete and succeed.

Challenges

Although workplace diversity comes with many benefits, it is not without its fair share of challenges that complicate the road towards reaping those rewards.  When many different individuals are present, there will almost always be differing and opposing opinions as perceptual, cultural, and language barriers need to be overcome.  The communication hurdle may result in confusion, teamwork, and low morale when key objectives are ineffectively communicated.

Also, a possible resistance to change may occur that can hinder your business progress towards diversifying your workplace.  There might be employees who will refuse to accept a change in the social and cultural makeup of their workplace.  They may be too used to the dynamics and processes that have existed, however, it is that type of mentality that silences new ideas and inhibits progress.

Laws

To accompany the trend of increasing diversity in our country, there are a slew of federal laws that are in place to help to ensure possible diversity in workplaces.  Most important are the laws dealing with discrimination such as: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits most workplace harassment and discrimination; Age Discrimination in Employment Act that governs against age discrimination; Americans with Disabilities Act which prohibits against discriminating against disabled workers or job applicants; ADA Amendments Act etc.

There are also state and local government laws in place that have enacted a variety of equal employment measures, so make sure to check those as well as the plethora of federal laws.

Workplace diversity has increased significantly over the years--embracing diversity and realizing its benefits can help your business compete and succeed.

What You Can do to Diversify

By far, the benefits of workplace diversity is greater than the challenges that obstruct the path to it, and it will be worth your while to pursue a very diversified team.  In order to overcome these challenges, it is important to build and implement a customized strategy to maximize the effects of diversity.  Contacts us at HR Synergy, so we can help you develop and implement strategies and policies that will get you on your way to a diversified workplace culture.