People-first culture aims to increase employee happiness. Employers adopt all sorts of measures to increase employee satisfaction and happiness. While employers around the world are focused on a few traditional approaches, the new generation of workforce demands more than the employers are delivering. Thus, missing out on achieving the desired employee happiness. 

Benefits of people-first culture

The workplaces that put employee engagement and happiness first, see: 

1. Increase in efficiency for workers;
2. Increase in revenue;
3. Greater satisfaction among customers; 
4. Increase in productivity of employees.   

Traditionally, employers have focused on the following areas to achieve employee happiness: 

1. Timely compensation – Competitive compensation and perks are perhaps the biggest contributor to achieving employees’ happiness. However, paying on time remains an idle factor to gauge employee engagement level. 

2. Health benefits – Employees want their employers to pay for their medical emergencies. Insurance, gym, and mental health app subscriptions are often part of the health benefits offered by employers. 

3. Work-life balance – Flexible working timings and work from home are part of plans for employers to allow workers and maintain a better work-life balance. 

4. Employee –manager relationship – Bad relationship with managers is the rank one reason for employees living their employers. Organizations hold training sessions and workshops to help managers to maintain a repo with employees. 

While these are common approaches of employers around the world to engage employees and make them happy. The rules of employee engagement seem to have changed a bit. 

 New focus-areas to build and foster people-first culture 

According to an infographic from Top CHRO, the following four areas are key factors in fostering people-first culture today. 

1. Workplace connections: Nearly 83% of employees feel knowing their coworkers will make them more engaged at work, according to a Globant report. Further, the report says, 62% of employees want to know their co-workers better. 

Helping employees to build meaningful connections with colleagues will work in favor of employers and help to achieve greater employee satisfaction. Employers should strive to enable employees to build better relationships with their co-workers.

2. Employee recognition– The Globant report found that 97% of employees want their strengths to be noticed at work. Employers need to strengthen their recognition programs; to motivate employees and make them happier. 

3. Improve feedback process – 72% of employees are unsatisfied with their feedback process, according to the Globant report. Providing regular feedback is vital for employees. In the absence of clear feedback, employees tend to get demotivated due to inefficiency and lack of results, resulting in employee turnover.

 Employers should strive to build a comprehensive feedback system that offers regular feedback to employees and track the improvement in performance after feedback. This will keep the feedback process transparent and effective. Employee feedback is a must for growth across all spheres of the business. 

Conclusion

Workplaces have undergone a significant change over the last few years. New-age workers have entered the workforce. So demand from workplaces have evolved. For employers, relying on traditional areas to build and progress their people-first culture isn’t enough. Employers need to rethink their strategy to improve employee engagement and happiness. It’s time for employers to go back to the board.