Employee relations are crucial if you want your business to be more productive and profitable. Photo by Daria Pimkina on Unsplash.
Quick quiz: Who’s your No. 1 customer? Your most important stakeholder?
It’s your employees.
That’s why I love employee relations — a.k.a. internal communications/PR. And that’s why I love interacting with human resources professionals.
In 2008 I earned my M.B.A. in management. What did I write my thesis on? Corporate culture.
The main point of my thesis — companies with a healthy corporate culture are more productive and profitable.
You should hear my neighbor, Charlie, complain about his employer’s corporate culture. He can’t stand working there. Charlie only goes to work for the paycheck. He has zero buy-in.
They have his hands and feet, but not his heart and mind.
I know a number of people who work or have worked at this company. Not one of them will you ever hear say, “I love working for the upper management of my company.”
Not one.
But as long as executive leadership is gripped by ego, they’ll remain blinded to what really matters when it comes to employees.
There are a number of wonderful books I’ve read about corporate culture. Maybe I’ll share my favorites in a future post.
5 Ways to Improve Your Corporate Culture
Let’s dive into five ways you can improve your corporate culture and employee relations.
- Build a Culture That Challenges, Educates and Rewards – Happy, motivated and empowered employees don’t happen by accident. They’re the product of a deliberate culture — one that gives people problems to solve, skills to develop and reasons to celebrate. The payoff is measurable: lower turnover, lower absentee rates and higher productivity. What business wouldn’t want that? They all affect profitability. Organizations that genuinely treat employees as their most important asset don’t just say it. They build systems around it.
- Make Respect the Default Setting – The golden rule applies at work. When employees are expected to treat co-workers, vendors and customers the way they’d want to be treated, it creates a consistent internal standard — one that radiates outward. Culture isn’t a poster on the wall. It’s how people behave when nobody’s watching.
- Open the Door — and Keep It Open – Open-door policies are only effective if they’re actually open. Employees should feel comfortable raising questions, concerns and ideas to leadership at any level. Regular all-hands meetings, Q&A sessions and even informal one-on-ones with senior executives build trust and keep your people engaged. One organization I’ve studied randomly selects employees each quarter to meet directly with its CFO and COO. That kind of access signals that leadership genuinely wants to hear from the front lines.
- Involve Employees in Real Decisions – Participation builds ownership. When it makes sense to give employees a voice in purchasing decisions, company policies or operational improvements, do it. And when they see their input taken seriously, they become invested in the outcome. That’s when you start winning their hearts. That investment shows up in their work, their attitude and how they talk about your organization outside of it (especially to their neighbors, right?).
- Make Your Culture the Story You Tell – The best employer brands aren’t built by HR departments. But they can be guided by HR pros working with a savvy chief communications officer (or communications consultant). Employer brands are built by employees who are proud of where they work. When your internal culture is strong enough, it becomes your external reputation. Every team member becomes a brand ambassador — not because you asked them to, but because they genuinely mean it and organically become it.
A research study by Lippincott, a global consultancy of brand strategists, content strategists, designers, creative writers, and software engineers, found that corporate values instilled through internal communications reverberate outside organizations, too. When employees are proud of where they work, it shows — in how they represent your brand to customers, how they talk about you in the community, and how effortlessly they attract talent to your organization.
A culture people believe in doesn’t stay inside your four walls. It walks out the door with every employee, every day.
The math is simple: take care of your employees, and they’ll take care of your brand. And when your brand is well-cared for, it’s likely to affect your profitability.
Profitable companies maintain current employees, can hire new ones, and contribute to a healthy economy. That’s a lot of wins.
3 Big Takeaways
- Your employees are your most important stakeholders. Organizations that build cultures around that belief — through challenge, respect and genuine inclusion — see it reflected in lower turnover, higher productivity, and a stronger brand reputation.
- Culture lives in behavior, not slogans. Open-door policies, all-hands meetings and two-way communication aren’t perks. Instead, they’re the building blocks of a workplace people want to stay in and brag about.
- Strong internal culture becomes a strong external brand. When employees are proud, they tell the world. That’s not a marketing strategy. That’s what happens when you get the employee experience right. And when the job candidate pool is low, happy employees will give you a competitive advantage.
What’s one thing your organization does exceptionally well to keep employees engaged and happy? What can it do better? Do share!
Stay authentic — and take extremely good care of the people inside your walls.
Jeffery E. Pizzino, APR (seen here in a vintage photo circa 1983 serendipitously doing a Clash impersonation in a since-forgotten location) is a spin-free public relations pro who is passionate about telling the why of your story with clarity, impact and authenticity. He began his PR career in 1987 at Ketchum Public Relations in New York City but has spent the majority of his career as a solopreneur. He’s the Chief Authentic Officer of the Johnson City, TN-based public relations firm, AuthenticityPR. He also functions as the fractional CCO for his clients.
Jeff has an MBA in Management from Western International University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications — with an emphasis in PR — from Brigham Young University (rise and shout!). He’s also accredited in public relations (APR). This Milwaukee, Wisconsin native holds an Italian citizenship and plans to live and work there someday. Jeff and his storyteller wife Leticia have four children and four grandchildren. In his extremely limited nonwork hours, he studies Italiano, practices guitar, write songs, gardens, works out, disc golfs, reads, listens to New Wave music, serves as an assistant communication director in his church, watches BYU football, enjoys watching the original Mission Impossible TV series, and plays board games (mostly Dominion and Seven Wonders). No, this guy’s never bored and looking for something to do. Email Jeff.
