Are you a Place to Be?

Would you consider your business to be an employer of choice? There are many benefits in becoming an employer of choice. It’s important that you strive to make your business a place where potential employees want to work. Finding great talent is difficult and the competition is fierce. A great employer will create an environment where employees want to come to work and feel fulfilled.

Being “A Place To Be” takes work, but in the end the perks are great. High moral, low turnover, low recruitment costs and higher returns. Being A Place To Be will increase your shareholder return and profit margins.

Here are five questions that you need to ask yourself in figuring out if your company is a place to be.

1. Do you invest in developing your company culture?

How much time, energy and money are you investing in company culture to attract and retain good talent? Your culture should be one that is supportive, encouraging, empowering, engaging, nurturing and innovative. By investing in your people, you create a culture that increases employee retention while building a more flexible, innovative and smarter workforce that can collaborate together.

2. Are you helping your employees grow and develop?

Employees need growth to be engaged and employers of choice will not allow their employees to be stagnate. You need to invest and create opportunities for your employees to grow. Employee development plans are a must for future growth.

3. Do you have a supportive management team?

Its important that your managers championing all employees and build trust and engagement. If that link is broken every step will be an uphill battle.

4. Do you have proper communication channels in place?

You need processes in place that keep employees in the loop. You need daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly touch points to ensure proper communication. If you are lacking communication then employees are not aware and don’t care.

5. Are you living your values?

It’s one thing to create company values and place them on a plaque on the wall, but are you living them? You need to start from the top and ensure decisions, actions, changes and additions all support the values that you live by. There should be no exceptions and anyone who doesn’t live your values shouldn’t be a part of your team.

Overall you need to strive to be an employer of choice. It’s a competitive world and you want a reputation and culture that attracts the best employees. Dedicate time and money into developing your culture as the benefits far outweigh the costs.