Company culture, team building, reducing poaching, increasing retention, and employee burnout have been key themes that HR managers have been focusing on lately. One chamber member admitted that the burnout effect has gotten a hold of his staff, but when he looked into increasing the company’s Paid Time Off (PTO) days he realized that 64% of his workers had the majority of their PTO that they didn’t take off within the past two years.

“Right now, company flexibility is a huge factor in making employees feel valued and keeping them content,” says Jamie Sieja, Marketing Director for Flex HR. A lot of businesses are still working fully or partially remotely or entering hybrid workplace situations. The comfort level of workers is all over the board. The simple notion of polling employees to see how they feel about coming back to the office and giving them supple working solutions will help retain staff, make them feel essential, and may even increase productivity.

In order to boost company culture and morale, it’s important for businesses to consistently communicate, check-in with all employees, and even organize cross team bonding activities. This can be done in person or remotely. Have a recurring bi-weekly zoom call with each team to share wins, discuss challenges and talk about hot topics. One chamber member mailed his team members a box of goodies but told them not to open it until the meeting, which added excitement and pre-meeting conversation. Add a little amusement by creating quarterly events for employees to partake in such as online bingo throughout a workday, a monthly step challenge, 30-minute company break for chair or standing yoga, team trivia, etc. Offer a small prize to the winners to increase participation.

Fun company events like these are one way to attract new talent, but what a challenge this has been for organizations throughout the country. Currently there are about three jobs available for every one person looking. Therefore, recruiters are having to get innovative with how to make their job descriptions sound more appealing. Increasing job perks has been the most common by way of offering gym discounts, work-related group memberships, more vacation time or incentives to take a full 2 weeks off at a time, student loan program benefits, etc. We even talked to some business owners that admitted they moved into a more premium office space or did an entire office makeover to refresh their company’s look and feel to better appeal to potential candidates.

Jim Cichanski, Flex HR’s Founder & CHRO explains “it is crucial to begin onboarding a new employee weeks before their official first day to start nurturing the new hire down the path of what’s to be expected when they come on board, including all of the details the position entails early on so they feel prepared and ready to jump into their new role right away.” Training managers and new hires is more important than ever, which is why funding for internal training programs has been on the rise.

Employers are updating policies and goal setting more than we’ve seen in the past couple of years. Annual reviews, performance assessments and mental health check-ins are wanted at both ends of the table to ensure manager – employee relationships are aligned with expectations. Jim Cichanski adds that according to a recent survey of work from home employees is that “they fear not getting promoted because they are not being seen.” Thus, the evidence that having manager to employee reviews or conversations from time to time make the individual feel more present.

Thank you to the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce for inviting Jim Cichanski and Jamie Sieja of Flex HR to speak on your panel as the HR expert to discuss talent attraction & retention challenges and solutions.

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