At GoodWell, a big part of our mission is to provide organizations like yours with actionable management insights. That’s why we put together this collection of best practices for developing happy, engaged and productive employees. We plan to expand these resources over time and hope you can adapt and implement them in your workplace

What action can you take?

Improve existing programs

From Harvard Business Review article

• Ignite managers’ passion to coach employees

• Teach employees to own their career development. Highly-structured, one-size-fits-all learning programs don’t work anymore. Individuals must own, self-direct and control their learning futures. But they can’t do it alone, nor should they. The development and growth of your talent is vital to your ongoing success, ability to innovate and overall productivity

• Provide flexible learning options

• Serve the learning needs of virtual teams

Develop a culture of learning

Becoming an empowering place to work is easier than you think. Set aside time for job enrichment opportunities. Always train to understand. The onboarding process is a great place to start:

Tips from TINYPl

Netflix’s onboarding process:

• Technology is set up when you arrive

• A dedicated mentor is assigned to help each new hire

• Netflix’s top executives, including CEO Reed Hastings, meet with all new hires

• Udupi requested a desktop workstation server over a self-serve portal and it was on his desk the next day 

Netflix cares about helping its new employees be successful starting on day one. Your company should mimic that approach.

Zappos, the e-commerce footwear juggernaut owned by Amazon, offers employees a five-week course that teaches them everything they need to know about company culture and values.

At the end of the course, Zappos employees are offered $2,000 to leave if they don’t think they’re the right fit. Believe it or not, only about 1% of new hires have actually taken the money. 

Amazon deemed this approach so effective that it adopted a similar approach. Jeff Bezos and the company pay employees $5,000 to quit if the employee feels her or she is not a good fit.

Implement quick checks & balances

Leaders should ask simple questions weekly:

• What obstacles are you facing and how can I help?

• What action can you take next week to improve your overall performance?

• What would you like to learn that will help you in your role?

Challenge new or current employees

Want to retain better talent? Use stretch assignments and projects. Consider special assignments that are coming up and who would benefit from serving on a cross-functional team while developing additional skills.

• Define what success is so employees can excel

• Develop a visual culture map

Every company has a culture, whether intentional or not. Often there is dissonance between how companies see their culture and how they actually live it.

Enter the culture map, your guide to creating a stronger office ecosystem.  Use it for the following:

1. To scale, replace or grow culture—i.e., when you currently like your culture but are growing

2. When you want to pivot and alter or change your culture

How to use a culture map:

• Find someone to work with

• Choose a company value

• Use these questions as a base, but feel free to steer off course as you dig into your culture. Find out where intended values are not working

• Repeat process for all company values

Start a dialogue and pinpoint areas where your actions don’t match intentions.

Enhance employee retention

Whether you work at a small business or large municipality, we hope these insights will help turn your workplace into a powerful advantage for attracting talented employees. Practices like those listed in this packet will help keep your organization healthy and sustainable. They will help boost employee satisfaction and decrease turnover. 

If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at companies@goodwellworld.com.