As HR managers and a member of the leadership team of an organization, you do your best to support your employees. You work hard to create a company culture with high moral, low turnover, and engaged employees who are dedicated to their work. Yet, no matter what you try and how much you do to support your staff, your company morale is low, engagement and productivity are down, and your employees are leaving. 

With no clear cause you’re left wondering what you’re missing and how you can create positive change that will last beyond a keynote presentation at a company-wide training day. The truth is it’s not the organizational policies that need to change. The power lies in the hands of your employees and it’s your job to show them how to access this.

So what is standing in the way of your employees realizing their role in improving company culture and owning their responsibility for their job satisfaction?

#1. Your employee’s mindset is preventing them from acknowledging their ability to influence their own job satisfaction

It’s no surprise that healthy and engaged employees create a strong and successful workplace culture.

But with 61% of employees feeling, overworked, underpaid, and under appreciated (aka “burnt out”) it is no surprise that this is a big hurdle that a lot of corporations must try and overcome. A study done in the US discovered that 31% of corporate employees resign within the first 6 months on the job due to low job satisfaction. In fact, it’s such a big issue that it’s estimated disengaged employees cost US businesses $550 billion dollars per year.

No amount of bonuses and surprise paid lunches and other little “gifts” will fix the burnout culture.

You hire people with great potential and who are enthusiastic about serving your company’s clients to the best of their ability.  Employees of your organization can realize that they can still deliver excellent quality of work and achieve great job satisfaction if they adopt a growth mindset and feel empowered to find solutions, rather than focusing on the problems. 

This will not only boost the productivity of your employees, it will also drastically improve retention rates. This is true for not only the employee who is now experiencing increased job satisfaction, but for the whole company culture because this person will not be commiserating in the staff room over shared struggles, but instead will lead by example showing others how to overcome limiting mindset beliefs.

#2 – Your Super-Achievers aren’t speaking up for themselves

There is a small percentage of your employees who are highly productive and are performing the work of two people without asking for additional pay or recognition.

Although this may seem like a good thing, the truth is these Super-Achievers could end up costing your organization a lot of money when they inevitably leave. Often you will need to hire two people to replace them because of how much extra time, dedication and energy they were giving to your company.

But if these employees aren’t speaking up for themselves, letting you know what they’re doing and what they need, how are you to know that they are feeling underappreciated? 

When you look at the successful people who are promoted in your organization they all have one thing in common; they ask for what they want and speak up for themselves.

You cannot read the minds of your employees,  but by empowering them and training them how to assertively advocate for themselves you will improve retention and save your company from needing to hire multiple people to replace your Super-Achievers who didn’t speak up for themselves.

#3 – Your organization has a lack of community and connection

89% of workers at companies that support well-being initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work.

But that doesn’t mean it’s up to you and the leadership team to start those initiatives.

One of the greatest ways you can improve retention is to foster a sense of community between your employees. By empowering your staff to set up their own community building initiatives, you’re creating a deeper connection that goes beyond your organization’s values and mission statement. There will be a sense of belonging amongst your staff that will not only improve retention, but could also lower recruitment fees because your staff will now be recommending your company as a great place to work because of this community connection.

It’s time for your organization to create positive change from the inside out

It’s not your fault that your workplace culture, productivity and retention rates are down, and it’s not up to you alone as the HR manager or member of the leadership team to fix these problems. 

When you provide the right evidence-based training for your employees to focus on finding their own solutions, rather than commiserating on problems, you will experience a shift in your workplace culture which in turn will improve overall productivity and retention. 

When the Super-Achievers in your organization know how to advocate for themselves, they will experience more job satisfaction and you will know how to better support their growth and advancement in your company. This will prevent you from needing to hire two people to replace them when they inevitably leave because they didn’t know how to speak up. 

Finally, by giving your employees the mental tools and strategies they need to create a strong sense of belonging and connection, your organization will notice a drastic improvement in morale. You may even experience added benefits such as lower recruitment costs because your dedicated employees will help seek out qualified candidates and easily convince them to join your organization because of this increased sense of community. 

Your employees hold the key to fixing these issues within your company. It’s up to you to give them the tools to make that happen.

One can no longer deny that stress in the workplace is it’s own epidemic.

In fact, 96% of the American workforce report experiencing stress in the workplace and research from the CDC shows that 25% of all employees state that their work is the number one source of stress in their life. On top of that, 63% of Americans are ready to quit their job due to the stress it causes.

The problem is, we weren’t designed for modern day stress. 

Our stress response was designed to help us run away from a bear and get us to safety. However, our body doesn’t know the difference between running away from a bear and negotiating a new client contract, working our way through a difficult problem, or managing challenging interpersonal relationships between colleagues and departments. I won’t go into too much detail, but stress essentially turns off our ability to think critically, problem solve, and process higher levels of thinking which then makes it harder for your employees to do their best work and further your organization’s mission.

Now, what does this mean in a practical sense i.e. your organization’s bottom line?

The symptoms of increased workplace stress and what they mean for you

There are many ways that increased stress in the workplace manifests itself in your employees, and all of which cost you money including:

• Lower productivity and repeat conversations due to poor communication
• High staff turnover due to low job satisfaction which costs you in their decreased productivity, the recruitment efforts required to find their replacement, and the training costs for the new employee
• Higher absenteeism due to stress related illness and burnout

The great news is that there are a lot of different strategies you can implement in your organization to improve the wellbeing of your employees, boost their productivity, and improve workplace culture.

#1 – Review and strengthen communication policies and practices

Company culture and employee retention don’t stand a chance if your employees either (a) don’t feel safe talking to the leadership team, or (b) feel that it’s ‘pointless’ to bring up their concerns because ‘nothing will be done about it’. Not only does this lead to gossip and toxicity in the workplace, it increases stress of the employees and decreases productivity and innovation. 

Foster the behavior that you want to continue. Show your employees that are assertive enough to bring sources of stress and dissonance to your attention that you hear them, understand their concern, and will clearly communicate a plan to address it in a timely manner. Your leadership team’s ability to do this requires them to have awareness of their own intrinsic biases, and access to their emotional intelligence (both of which are included in my CLEAR Career and Corporate Programs).

#2 – Teach your employees and leadership team how to deactivate their stress response to regain access to their higher-level thinking abilities

In the age of McMindfulness and the cultural appropriation of Buddhist culture, I’m not going to be talking about some ‘zen’ practices that your organization needs to adopt. Instead, I want to share the research around breathwork.

Our stress response is like a switch. It’s either on and activated (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) or deactivated (rest and digest). Below is a chart that compares some of what’s happening in your body in each of these states:

Notice that when your stress response is turned on your breathing is fast, and when your stress switch is turned off your breathing is slow and deep. This is the key that unlocks our potential to control our stress response.

In his book “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” James Nestor explores the evidence around breath control and its effect on our mental health and physical wellbeing. There are many techniques we can use to turn off our stress response. Box breathing is one of the most well known techniques to achieve this and it is often used in stressful hospital environments such as the emergency room and intensive care units as well as in the military.

It is important to note, however, that this breathing strategy only addresses the symptom of the increased workplace stress, not the cause.

#3 – Strengthen your leadership’s team ability to address the stressors at their source

In my article, The Case for Women Leaders, I talk about the strengths that women and other marginalized groups have that can positively impact the overall flow and performance of any organization. By diversifying your leadership team, you improve its ability to address the systemic causes of stress within your organization and come up with creative solutions to increase employee job satisfaction and thus improve retention rates and productivity. As with so many things, proactive responses are far more beneficial than reactive responses. 

Over the past 15 years as a leadership coach, I’ve noticed that there are five characteristics of a proactive leader that make them successful:

1. Clarity on their ability to influence their team to achieve the company’s mission and goals
2. Their willingness to learn and examine the biases and systems that may be sabotaging the efforts of the team
3. The leader’s ability to delegate and utilize the team’s skills and strengths
4. Self-awareness, and
5. A growth mindset that can meet challenges and obstacles with confidence knowing that they and their team will be able to come up with a solution

All of these characteristics require a leader’s ability to manage and control their stress to maintain access to their higher-level thinking capabilities. 

Don’t allow your company to become a victim of “The Great Resignation” and share these strategies with your leadership team. You may be surprised with the innovation that will come from it as well as the shift in your company culture.