Companies of every size and industry are feeling the crunch from high turnover and hiring woes. The churn puts additional stress on company resources to hire, onboard, and train up workers or take on extra work as some positions remain open. The increased pressure put on supervisors and managers hustling to cover the work with available resources and hours pulls attention from the damage to another company cornerstone: company culture.
How can companies ensure their culture remains intact while weathering new hiring woes and higher rates of turnover? By paying attention to how new employees interact with company culture and by tuning in to employee sentiment on company culture.
The Trickle-Down Effects of Strong Company Culture
Culture may seem like the last agenda item to pay attention to during high turnover. But company culture has a large impact on day-to-day operations and how work is completed. Because culture is a leading indicator for safety.
New hires look to senior employees, immediate supervisors, and managers for insight into a company’s culture because those are the employees with the most experience within the company. This is even more true with multiple new hires within a department or role trying to gain a footing in the company and make a good impression on their peers.
These newer employees want to fit in and mirror the actions of employees around them in to show they understand the company culture. New employees take their cues for how to treat work and safety requirements directly from their peers. This can be good for building habits when employees respect safety within the workplace or a potential hazard when influential employees feel disconnected from their workplace’s safety culture.
Established employees pass on their feelings and opinions for a company’s safety culture both through their deliberate actions and through indirect actions — such as ignoring a safety protocol when they think no one is looking. And new hires will mimic the behavior of these employees when they see others show a lack of safety discipline and a disregard for safety procedures.
Align With Employees on Culture and Safety
The best way to ensure strong safety practices and company culture principals stay front and center through turnover is by gaining insights into exactly how employees feel about both safety and the company culture. Which means gathering data by asking the right questions in a way where employees feel they can answer honestly and objectively.
Employee surveys provide direct access for employers to learn how employees feel about the safety culture and the company as a whole. They’re a powerful tool that allow companies to get directly to the heart of employee sentiment without individually interviewing each worker. But these surveys need to ask questions in a way that maximizes the data from employees and minimizes confusion or subjective emotional responses. And distributing surveys, compiling responses, analyzing the results, and creating action plans based on the data requires redirecting a lot of effort and manpower while juggling resources that are already stretched thin from turnover and hiring. Which is exactly why Optimum Safety Management developed their PerceptionPulseTM Engagement Survey.
The PerceptionPulseTM Engagement Survey is designed by safety professionals to measure how aligned employees are on company cultural. This is done by focusing questions on dozens of data points centered on four key categories: Safety Culture, Management & Leadership, Perceived Organizational Support, and Processes & Systems. The survey digs deep to distill findings from the survey results into holistic action items that companies can apply to boost their company culture, safety program adherence, and other safety goals. And partnering with Optimum with the PerceptionPulseTM Engagement Survey means companies can rely on Optimum to distribute the surveys, collect the results, and provide a comprehensive report on the findings.
Cut through the guesswork on whether employees are aligned on safe work habits and company culture. Get real results and insights right from the employees themselves with the help of Optimum Safety Management.
Optimum Safety Management provides the information and services to help companies develop safety leaders and improve overall safety performance. For more information on how Optimum Safety Management can assist with your businesses’ safety needs, contact an expert today, or reach out via phone at 630-759-9908.
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