Category Archives: Company Culture

Ideas for Building a Positive Office Culture

Business people meeting to encourage office culture at their company

Here at CorpStrat, we pride ourselves on providing an office culture that promotes positivity, fun, engagement, and respect. The culture is the character and personality of an organization, and serves as the guiding principles for every member.

Keep traditions, and start new ones

Every quarter, we surprise our employees with various benefits, activities and outings. Even during open enrollment, our busiest time of the year, we find ways to enhance the work experience and make our employees feel special. Our most recent event involved a special delivery of everyone’s favorite drink from Starbucks, which provided employees with a mid-day break and gave us an opportunity to engage in social interaction. Definitely a morale booster!

These types of perks create a sense of unity and fun. They promote a collaborative work environment that inevitably yields increased productivity. People work to the best of their capabilities and creative skills when they’re surrounded by an encouraging work environment that values them.

Remove Negativity

Conversely, negative attitudes in the workplace kill creativity, and can have a dramatic impact on the entire workforce, and your bottom line. When everyone on your team is working together to solve problems and be more efficient, tasks get done faster!

Work culture plays a pivotal role in retaining and binding people to an organization. Smart businesses know that a good work environment is critical to its success. Don’t allow your company culture to just happen on its own. Taking your business to the next level starts with having a strong culture that inspires managers and employees to reach their full potential.

Promote Togetherness

It’s important to us that we create a culture where employees feel connected to those they work with and do the best work of their lives. We do this by investing time understanding what our values were early on and making them a major part of how we run the business.

We do our best to create an environment that everyone is proud of. Therefore, when it comes to employee benefits, we put more resources and time into charitable causes that turn into culture-building events. Employees contributing to the social good recognize that philanthropy can provide good fuel for any company. For example, this past month, we spent the afternoon at Operation Gratitude, wrapping care packages Veterans. This kind of volunteerism makes for a fun and compassionate culture of giving back.

Whether it’s building a strong culture through incentive or charitable work, company culture is an integral part of business.

8 Strategies for Keeping Your Key Employees Engaged in 2019

Employee who is engaged working at new job

According to Gallup, 51% of employees are looking for a new job, and 68% of employees believe they are overqualified for the job they have. Even engaged employees are job hunting at an alarming rate—37%. Employees surveyed said they want to do what they do best, while maintaining a good work-life balance.

Providing perks is nice, and can encourage retention, although, providing an assortment of standout perks alone won’t keep employees long-term – unless, however, those perks meet essential employee needs.

Therefore, we’ve compiled the best tips on how to retain employees and meet their needs. Above all, remember why they became your employees, to begin with—they have wants and needs, and employment with your business enables them to meet those wants and needs.

Meeting both the employee and employer needs creates a solid basis for long-term collaboration and shared success. Here’s how to do this:

  1. Open the floor to discussion with your employees about what knowledge, skills, and resources they think would help them do their job better or make additional contributions to the organization. By involving employees in the discussions and decisions made about what trainings they receive, you help them gain a sense of ownership over their work.

 

  1. Provide coaching and training opportunities that bring value to your organization and the professional development of your employees. Certifications may make your workers more employable elsewhere, but it prepares them for a better future working for you. You can increase the likelihood that your employees will use the training they receive for your benefit by giving them opportunities to put what they’ve learned to use and rewarding them when the new skills and extra effort pays off.

 

  1. Involve employees in organization initiatives that make use of their training or teach them new ones. Not only will this help prevent their jobs from becoming too monotonous, but they will also gain valuable experience and form a connection to the organization that goes beyond job duties.

 

  1. Make work meaningful and highlight the good that your organization and employees do. This is especially important if the job duties of an employee feel mundane or uninspiring. If you’re compensating someone to do a job, that job is essential to the mission of your organization. And that mission has value. Make sure employees know that their tasks, however repetitive or unexciting, matters.

 

  1. Show your appreciation and gratitude. Recognize workers for a job well done when they accomplish goals. This goes without saying but people want to feel appreciated, that they’re important, and that they’re involved in valuable work. You can help fulfill these wants and needs.

 

  1. Encourage social interactions among workers. While money might be the primary reason people get jobs, it’s not the only People tend to seek social connections and enjoy interacting with others on a daily basis. They like doing things with other people, and the workplace can be a great place to make friends, build community, and collaborate on a meaningful enterprise.

 

  1. Offer bonuses when your company meets its financial goals and when employees meet their individual and team goals. It’s important to motivate your people to be more engaged and productive. By rewarding hard-working employees with a tangible return on their investment, you are investing in your most important assets, your people.

 

  1. If feasible, offer raises to account for cost-of-living increases, job performance, and individual accomplishments. Like bonuses, raises encourage efficient and productive work by rewarding it. If you’re unable to offer substantial raises or bonuses, the non-monetary rewards mentioned or bonuses above become all the more useful and important.

There’s no guarantee that every hire will be the right fit and stay with your company as long as you’d like, but you can help improve retention and meet employee needs—to cut down on its costs—by remaining useful to your employees.

Your employees want to succeed in their professions as much as you do in your business. By aligning their individual success and skill set with your organizational success, you give them a huge incentive to stay, improve their skills, and put their strengths to good use in your organization.

Building a Culture of Giving Back

CorpStrat team builds office culture by giving back to verterans

This month our office coordinated a really special culture building event. As a team, we chose an organization that was in need of our time, money and efforts to a community where giving back is important. 

We spent the afternoon at Operation Gratitude in Chatsworth California, an organization that sends nearly 300,000 individually packaged care boxes to Veterans, Wounded Heroes, and their Care Givers.  Through collection drives, letter writing campaigns, craft projects, and care package assembly events, Operation Gratitude provides civilians anywhere in America a way to say “Thank You” through active, hands-on volunteerism.

What We Accomplished

Upon arrival, the CorpStrat team were given a tour of the entire facility at Operation Gratitude, where we were shown all of the various items Americans donate to the organization to send to our troops.

Then as a group, we put together care packages with necessities such as toiletries, protein bars, energy drinks, scarfs and letters written by American’s to give the troops hope during their time of service.

Operation Gratitude’s Battalion Buddy Program 2018We even played a part in stuffing plush toy teddy bears that the organization receives from donations! Operation Gratitude provided us with the stitched shell of the bears to start off with. Next, we put all of the stuffing into the bears to ‘perfect’ them, making sure the bears had the right amount of stuffing (without ripping the seams).

Once completed, the bears were packaged with all other care goods and sent to family members who currently have someone serving. In the end, we were successful in stuffing and making about 30 bears and 100 care packages.

It’s charitable donations like these that CorpStrat employees feel inspired to drive change in our community and within our organization. Because when you build a company culture of giving back you set the stage for a purpose-filled environment that inspires passion and change.

Why CorpStrat

CorpStrat office building in Woodland Hills

We are not an organization that talks a lot about ourselves.

We prefer our work to stand for itself.

CorpStrat is a combination of old-school traditional values, where service and modern technology meet to help companies and professionals advance their objectives. We are at our best when we are engaging in discussions about how we help you, rather than focusing on us.

People do ask: “why CorpStrat? What is it you can do for us? We know you help companies manage employee benefits, offer a non-call center payroll, help companies implement HR technology, and help companies establish best practices and comply with HR strategies. What sets you part?

We’re united by shared goals and shared motivations at CorpStrat. These are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team. We believe it’s our people, and their commitment to our values:

  1. Teamwork – We work together to achieve the best outcomes for our clients
  2. Great Attitude – We bring positive energy to each interaction.
  3. Client Interest First – All of our actions are guided by achieving client objectives
  4. CorpStrat Golden Rule – We show up on time, do what we say, finish what we start, and say “please” and “thank you”
  5. Passionate Learners – We are constantly increasing our knowledge and gaining wisdom

We live true to our mission statement, proudly displayed in our office entry: We create long-term advisory relationships, provide consistent and proven strategies focused on client objectives while delivering exceptional service.

Why CorpStrat? We know it, We show it, We own it. Simple.

How to Build a Positive Workplace Culture

two female employees looking at iPad. smiling and looking positive in the workplace culture.

Creating a Favorable Work Culture

Do you consider yourself a person who acts with kindness and positivity?

CorpStrat’s positive workplace culture is one of the most important features that we provide for our employees. We believe our culture throughout the years has been the driving force in attracting and retaining our employees on a long-term basis. Consider some of these ways to build more of an inspiring office culture.

One of the strategies we use to maintain a positive working environment is planning a monthly activity, we call “Friday Fun.” 

For approximately 45 minutes, everyone takes a break and convenes in an area of the office to play a game – ‘Name that tune’ and Cornhole are two of our favorites. We also offer prizes, which adds to the liveliness of the game. The goal is to make it an extended, relaxing, and fun-filled break, which allows an opportunity for everyone to bond, and to strengthen the chemistry among our team.

Setting The Tone

A favorable work culture is one which encourages employees to behave like a family and one where employees have each other’s back. Everyone shares and supports one another’s goals, in addition to celebrating our successes.

Though leaders are mostly responsible for setting the tone, employees also contribute to how the cultural dynamic unfolds. So, it’s no surprise when companies develop a positive and kind work culture, they achieve substantially higher levels of effectiveness.

It is vital in bringing out the best in employees, even in adverse circumstances. Research shows the best way to improve your work culture is positive communication amongst your staffers, increased mindfulness, supportive attitudes, team spirit and providing a sense of purpose. That’s why when employees work as a team to meet both the company’s and their own personal needs, it’s a win-win for everyone!