When recruiting potential top talent, it’s important for employers to ensure they have a high-quality workplace that beats out the competition. Employees tend to gravitate towards companies with a high regard for their workers. Improving your company to meet the needs of top talent while navigating the recruiting waters may seem difficult, but there are many fixes that can be beneficial to current and future employees.

Establish Trust

Establishing trust in the workplace can be integral to employee retention, but as each employee is different, building an environment in which employees feel as if they can trust their superiors will lead to better morale and engagement.

Through authentic relationships built on praise and constructive criticism when necessary, employers can make their employees feel completely supported in their professional environment. This can also be achieved by investing in an employee’s personal career development within the organization. One way to do this is by scheduling regular performance conversations with your employees in which “next-step” actionable tasks can be discussed. This helps employees’ progress and can make an employee feel valued by the company as a whole, and by their supervisors.

Improving trust within your company can also further develop a team-oriented, collaborative environment, which can potentially lead to innovative ideas not thought of before. Employees who feel that their employer trusts them will also be more loyal towards the company and will be more likely to stay at the organization. This tends to also decrease workplace stress and hostility. Workers will actually want to do their work and will enjoy doing it, ultimately decreasing costs due to improved efficiency.

Foster Strong Lines Of Communication

Communication can make or break an organization and it is necessary to establish healthy communication habits early on in business development. Building skills and channels to support employees and their needs encourages efficient and effective communication skills, which will resonate throughout the workplace.

Beneficial internal communication can be implemented in a number of different ways. The introduction of company-wide communication software will allow for rapid, almost immediate conversation between individuals and within entire departments. This change can bring teams closer and can improve collaboration and encourage team-building to reach the final goal.

Furthermore, regular, transparent meetings between higher-ups and those who work beneath them can build soft, interpersonal communication skills. During these meetings, leaders should practice active listening, which can be done by listening to understand through observation of a speaker’s body language, in addition to what they are saying. When leaders practice this, subordinates will learn to implement this skill in their own lives and will feel more comfortable confiding in their managers. Leaders should also practice providing both positive and constructive criticism. Each employee learns differently and understanding what each employee values in criticism will improve managerial leadership skills and will help employees grow.

Create a Culture of Transparency

The key to mastering both trust and communication is transparency. If an employee feels valued by the company and is shown honesty and inclusion, they will be encouraged to produce efficiently. These types of scenarios only occur when leaders are transparent with their employees.

In order to cultivate a transparent workplace, honestly, patience, and accessibility need to be priorities for business leaders. Companies that are open about the overall performance and future goals of the business can expect employees to feel involved and stay engaged. This also keeps the overall workplace stress levels low and allows employees to take ownership in their organization’s success.

In addition, explaining the importance of each task and giving reasons why specific projects are assigned to different teams can also improve transparency. If a task is given to or taken from an employee without explanation, those employees may be left feeling confused, or may not be aware of the strategic reasoning behind certain tasks. Not only does knowing the ‘why’ build transparency, it also can empower an employee and lead to increased productivity and efficiency.

Build an Engaging Culture

A company’s culture can not only drastically affect the morale of an organization, but also has a direct correlation to employee engagement, productivity, retention rate, and positive recruitment outcomes.

Company culture is the internal and external identity of a business. It’s the tried and true representation of how a company acts on its core values.

To further enhance and maintain a positive company culture, it’s important to reward employees for their hard work and dedication. This can be done through a variety of means such as offering company swag, taking the team on team-building trips, providing flexible work arrangements, and offering financial incentives.

By providing these rewards, employees will feel appreciated and valued, leading to increased job satisfaction, higher levels of engagement, and lower turnover rates.

In a survey taken by more than 1,400 North American CEOs, more than half of the respondents agreed that corporate culture affects productivity, creativity, profitability, and growth rate. Many of these business executives also agreed that their company culture wasn’t currently where they wanted it to be, and 92% stated that they believe improving the culture at their organization would increase the company’s value.

Maintain a Strong Organizational Structure

Lastly, an organized company will have a higher production rate than a disorganized one. Organizations should provide their employees with clear direction on how to fulfill their roles and how to ask for help within a chain of command. By organizing your business on a personal level as well as a corporate level, you can make all your employees’ lives easier when it comes to their day-to-day tasks.

An example of a popular corporate-level organizational idea is implementing various solutions and systems to automate tasks to improve engagement and efficiency. HR leaders are implementing systems such as human capital management solutions to make important or necessary documents accessible and understandable, such as time worked, availability, and scheduling. These systems also drastically improve the talent acquisition processes, which leads to better and more efficient hiring.

Employees should also be encouraged to keep their individual workspaces organized too. This can be achieved through simple tasks of clearing inboxes, digitizing when possible, having designated “homes” for desk items, and preparing for Monday’s tasks on Friday.

Transforming your organization into a great place to work may seem daunting, but it can be broken down into steps as simple as communicating with current employees to help satisfy their needs. Following these tips can improve morale, increase productivity, and can even help with talent acquisition. Keeping employees in mind while making decisions can help your company become an exceptional place to work.