How to Build Community and Culture in the Workplace

You are not simply building a company. You are building a unique community that can serve as your most competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent. This takes care and intention.

Communities are all around us, in neighborhoods, churches, schools, clubs, and businesses. We can have a community with a handful of people or thousands, tied together by shared interests or experience—or a common culture. Although all communities change over time, today’s workplaces are off the charts with change. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Thriving workplace communities grow within cultures where the strategy is to put people first. People-first cultures are built on relationships, trust, and common values as their foundation, with a strong sense of wellbeing the outcome. Cultures will not evolve by default. You must design them in ways that shape a positive work environment and reflect your core values.

Workplace Culture Through the Lens of Employee Retention

Uncertainty continues to impact our business environment and job market. Candidates have more choice, and in their job searches, they are looking for where they can contribute and where they fit culturally.

Understanding the reasons people choose you as their employer and what motivates them to stay is critical in retaining talent. Ask yourself, “What are we actually doing to make our company a place where people want to come, feel valued, and contribute?” Employees don’t hesitate to leave when they’re not satisfied or when their expectations are not met.

Community is very much a mutual concept and experience. Ask your people what they want their community to look like and they will tell you. Your employees are experiencing you, but are you being purposeful about what they experience? It is a subtle shift in thinking and in how you engage with each other.

HR leaders now think of retention as more than policy. It has come to represent everything that goes into creating a workplace where people choose to be. Listening, fairness, inclusiveness, flexibility, and celebration are all priorities in a people-first culture—as is proactively creating work/life balance solutions. These are things employees care deeply about—and major reasons they stay with you.

Employees want to feel safe and know they are trusted, respected, and valued. They want growth opportunities and recognition for their contributions. When your culture satisfies these basic needs, employee retention is high. When you go further and treat your employees as well as you do your customers, why would they ever choose to leave? Loyal employees are every bit as valuable to your business as loyal customers.

The Critical Role of Leaders in Shaping Culture and Community

Leaders are responsible for making sure their communities work for members, whether workplaces or hobby clubs. The companies that are still practicing top-down management with little flexibility or humanity are successful only at creating stress, fear, and lack of trust. Today’s employees choose companies where leadership demonstrates that they value their people.

The quality most appreciated in leaders today is empathy. Putting people first is a natural characteristic of empathic leaders. They show it by:

• Listening first, always
• Understanding what the issue is really about
• Being patient and non-judgmental
• Agreeing to disagree
• Being respectful
• Communicating more than they would ever have thought necessary

People-centered leaders are proactive in supporting healthy cultures as well as business success. They connect deeply with their people by telling the truth, showing a willingness to be vulnerable, showing competence and accountability, building trust through empowerment, and encouraging innovation. By putting people first, these leaders attract the top talent every company needs. They also build high levels of employee engagement that helps retain them. There is much more about this topic in my recent article, “Leaders Play a Critical Role in Crafting Employee Engagement Strategies.”

Strategies for Growing a Thriving Community

The key pillars for any workplace community are simple: Listen. Listen. Listen. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Do not lose touch with your people, embracing technology where appropriate and making it personal when possible and practical. Communication consistency is key in building trust.

Other things you must do to ensure your community is fully engaged and able to thrive are:

• Understand and appreciate that your company is a unique community, with shared relationships and common values.
• Get clear about what your people want and need and find ways to accommodate them.
• Treat employees with respect and empathy and communicate with transparency.
• Recognize that flexibility is here to stay; employees demand it, and you need to provide it.
• Define guardrails for employees, whether they work onsite or virtually, to ensure fairness and reinforce flexibility and community.
• Maximize opportunities for connection through shared workspaces, micro groups, and space for social connections.
• Provide growth opportunities through skills training, advancement, and lateral moves. Welcome back valued employees if they leave.
• Give and accept feedback regularly and naturally, not just annually and formally.
• Train managers how to be coaches, not bosses.
• Ensure people have meaningful work, time to ponder, and the autonomy to get the job done.
• Make sure no one is overworked and address burnout where it occurs.
• Model your values and the behaviors you want see.
• Show genuine interest and care.

Measuring and Sustaining a Healthy Culture

A clear understanding of where you are is the first step in making improvements. Whether or not you have a thriving community cannot be assessed by a gut feeling. How successful are your strategies in reality? What are you not doing that you should be?

We suggest TalenTrust’s Talent & Culture Quiz and Report as a means to identify your specific human capital issues and mitigate them before they become costly barriers to your success. This customized report card helps you and your team prioritize and take actionable steps to achieve a healthy culture and sustain it.

Jobseekers consider a company’s culture before even applying for a job. To many, your culture is more important than the salary you offer. When your community thrives, you can harness its power to win and keep top talent.