Exceptional Workplace Culture Is Essential to Attract and Retain Top Talent

In the last twenty years workplace culture has gone from the back seat of the bus to the driver’s seat whether leaders want it to or not. Between the massive generational shift of the workforce, constant technological innovation, and the incredible impact of the pandemic on work and the workplace we are living in a whole new world where culture is strategy and a whole new workforce is changing the way we recruit and retain top talent.

This spring the Canadian Workplace Culture Index was developed by surveying more than a thousand employed Canadians from across the country. That survey revealed and confirmed some Stark realities regarding the current state of workplace culture in Canada. In this session we have revealed, for the first time publicly, some of the key insights surfaced in that work and then work together to develop strategies and solutions that work. Attendees were led on a facilitated exercise to surface and share their collective intelligence regarding the keys to developing and implementing a powerful employee/employer value proposition.

Join the Canadian Workplace Culture Index in their mission to recognize, evaluate, and amplify exceptional organizational culture, and in enriching the human experience. We use research and best practices, to score you against the national benchmark and provide actionable resources for a sustainable people strategy.

Take a look at the key insights from the event, and use our resources below to strengthen your culture in attracting and retaining best talent.

1. Get To Know Your People's True Voice

Understand Your Employees Values and Needs – Communicate with your team to understand each unique and evolving needs of your team members. As Lorie mentioned, focusing on attracting top talent is crucial, but focusing on retaining your current internal team is essentially equally as important. Your current team has already gone through the recruitment process, they are your people. You must be committed in taking the time to understand what they value.

“Culture is the heart and energy of a shared human experience” – Lorie Corcuera

Engage With Your People. Make Sure They Feel Valued and Fulfilled – Looking at the Theory of Motivation expressed through the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a great tool to measure engagement in a workplace setting. The more your people’s needs are satisfied, the more engaged they will be and the more they will be contributing. Providing your employees with a salary and desk is not a mean to engage them, it is defined as the survival stage in which employees take their salary home and leave as soon as they can. Instead, understand their personal needs and lives and adapt in a way that drives them to the ‘self-actualization’ stage, in which they love their workplace, are highly engaged and want to inspire, help others and exceed expectations.

2. Build Your Employer Brand

What Makes Your Company Stand Out? – Compensation and an office are important, but remember that it only satisfies the ‘Survival’ stage of the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs above. Instead, think how you can help them go after their personal and professional goals. Support them personally and professionally. This is unique with every employee, perhaps they value career growth, or are intrinsically motivated to learn a new skill, language. In the end, ask yourself how you can make them reach their purpose.

Creating your Employer and Employee Brand – When creating your Employer Value Proposition (EVP), you need to consider your company’s core benefits, the promise you make to each applicant through your job description and what your company and culture offer in exchange for their talent, skills and experience. From another perspective, you need to determine your Employee Value Proposition (EVP’) and understand the set of benefits received by your employee in return for skills, experience and what they bring to the company. Put yourself in their shoes to understand if they value the benefits you offer to them. How important are these from their personal point of view?

Key Questions To Ask Yourself When Positioning As An Employer:

What makes our company stand out?
Is our benefit and compensation program comparable to the market? Is it inclusive, in terms of responding to unique needs?
What benefits do we provide to our people?
How does it connect to our stakeholders (clients, investors, etc.)?
How do we support each team member in reaching their unique purpose?

3. Use Your EVP As Your Shield Against The Great Resignation.

“We’ve got a three-step process (as followed) How de we make this postable? How can people socialize this, whether they are off site or whatever they are? This is their guiding North Star for making decision; tough decisions that they might need to make on their own. If that EVP isn’t helping guide them in that way and connecting them to their organization, then I don’t think it’s serving its purpose.” – Antonio Zivanovic

Examples of the Reframe Groups and CWCI habits to effectively use the EVP:

Understand purpose, vision mission, values.
Going through exercices and onboarding sessions in our culture deck.
Taking part in actively communicating the culture.
Every three month we connect outside of work.
We do a potluck every month.
We select as a team what cause we want to fund.

The goal here is to make it happen. You have to embedded in everything that we do. Think about your stakeholders, not just your shareholders. The most important thing is not only to do, it is repetition and going through the process again and again to understand the evolving needs and values of your people.

Find Our Event Slides Below!

Use the EVP Worksheet

Learn More About The Canadian Workplace Culture Index

Founded in 2021 by the Reframe Group and partner Angus Reid Institute, the Canadian Workplace Culture Index (CWCI) is a uniquely Canadian benchmark of Canadians’ opinions about workplace culture.

Using the Index, Canadian organizations with 10 or more employees can assess and certify their workplace culture and receive valuable reports, qualitative feedback, custom actionable insights and recommendations on how to improve their workplace culture across six distinct workplace attributes: workplace satisfaction, company cares, diversity and inclusion, recognition and communications, employee connection and loyalty.

Visit our Home Page to learn how we promote exceptional workplace culture and how we help organizations unleash their people’s full potential.

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