April 26, 2022
If you didn’t know already, I’m here to tell you that turnover is expensive AF!!
So how can you reduce turnover? Research suggests that employee engagement is key.
Not only in terms of the money you lose, but also the time you lose by hiring, onboarding, and training a replacement employee. And when you’re running a business, your time is priceless.
Research from the Hay Group finds that highly engaged employees are, on average, 50% more likely to exceed expectations than the least-engaged workers. And companies with highly engaged people outperform firms with the most disengaged folks—by 54% in employee retention, by 89% in customer satisfaction, and by fourfold in revenue growth.
Harvard Business Review
The key to engaged employees starts with your company’s culture. By clearly defining your business’s mission, vision, values, and voice when hiring and managing employees, employees will know what is expected of them AND be committed to the goals of your business.
If you haven’t yet nailed down how you envision what your company culture looks like in action, I suggest filling out this worksheet first.
Keeping Employees Engaged Online
Cultivating a company culture in an online business looks very different from in-person offices. In the online business space, it can seem harder to develop relationships among employees. There’s no “water cooler talk” happening in online business.
Additionally, it may be hard to recognize the work of employees in front of their peers. To help online businesses cultivate a strong company culture and keep employees engaged, I’ve compiled a list of services you can utilize that are compatible with remote teams.
15Five
15Five is a performance management platform that offers various products to engage employees, increase performance, and develop effective management techniques.
Other than products, 15Five also offers education resources, coaching, and a community where HR and People Operations leaders can connect and support one another.
More than 40,000 teams including Spotify, HubSpot, and Credit Karma utilize 15Five to engage their teams.
Prices for 15Five products and resources for teams range from $4 to $14 per user, per month. They offer plans for engagement, performance, focus, and all three in a Total Platform plan. The Total Platform plan includes engagement surveys and insights, performance reviews, 360° feedback, competencies, performance data insights, OKR management and insights and management enablement and people development.
15Five can be used on iOS and Android apps and has HRIS integrations with services such as Workday, Gusto, and more. They also offer impressive authentication and privacy or even enterprise-grade security.
15Five utilizes a holistic approach backed by science to create a performance management platform perfect for remote teams. 15five is great for a collaborative remote culture where many individuals are interacting with different departments on a daily basis. Our clients who use 15five have seen an increase in openness with their team members and reap the benefits of a feedback culture.
Check out 15Five here.
Slack
Slack is a communication platform for entire companies and teams to connect online. They focus on replacing emails with faster, better organizes, and secure communication.
Slack allows you to create channels for every project, team, office, department, or any group of individuals you want a space for easy communication. However, you can also direct message one person and have one-on-one conversations.
Here at Paradigm, we use Slack for all our communication needs. We have a Slack channel for our team, our Set to Scale members, and I can reach out to any of my employees from my iPhone or computer whenever something comes to mind. When messaging on Slack, you can send documents, voice recordings, video recordings, images, links, and even send cute emojis 🙂 .
A Slack membership ranges from $6.67 to $12.50 per person, per month (when billed yearly).
Check out Slack here.
Assembly
Assembly is a communication suite that offers many services and templates for improving employee engagement, recognition and rewards, manager empowerment, and more.
Similar to Slack, employees can message one another directly to avoid sending emails that will get lost in inboxes. However, Assembly sites can be customized with “flows”, or add-ons to encourage employee engagement and recognition.
The “rewards flow” enables managers to send rewards to employees in the form of gift cards, donations to charities, and culture awards that can be customized to fit the goals of your business. There is a flow for employee recognition where team members can give each other shout-outs for impressive work, which can be viewed by everyone on your team. Additionally, there is a “general news feed” flow where employees can post ideas, questions, or just fun updates about their lives!
But wait… there’s more! Assembly even has an “icebreakers” flow to encourage team members to get to know one another and form better connections. And the list of awesome flows and features goes on….
Assembly offers one week free to ensure you like their site before making any purchases. After the free trial, prices range from $3.50 to $8.50 per user, per month.
Check out assembly here.
Final Thoughts…
As online business owners, we have the responsibility to set the standard that working in online business is a GREAT place to work. By recognizing the importance of creating a positive company culture and keeping employees engaged, our impact and reach is only going to expand and become more legitimate. It’s time for us to change the narrative and create a situation where we are becoming competitors in the employer space.
While nothing can quite replicate the relationships built through face-to-face interactions, these services and software do a damn good job at bringing remote teams together to form more meaningful connections.
Different employees may require different things to feel connected in the online space. We suggest utilizing these services in combination with one-on-one conversations with employees to ensure their needs are being met.
Are we friends on the ‘gram? If this blog was helpful, say hello!
