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Every business has a culture—that’s right, even yours! But what makes the difference between a healthy company culture and a toxic one? Read on to find out.

First, let’s get clear about what company culture is. It can seem kind of hazy, but culture is just the collective attitudes and behaviors of your organization. Culture is how your company does things—and it’s not one-size-fits-all. Now that you know what it is, you may be asking: how do you build a great company culture? That’s a great question! And we have the answers (and some tips you can use to transform your business). Let’s get into it

The way your team experiences your business has a major impact on how effective they are in their roles. A miserable work experience (aka a hostile work environment) is bad for your business’s brand and growth potential, as well as team members’ productivity and mental health. And the opposite is true too—a healthy culture keeps your team happy and engaged in their roles and contributes to the growth of your business. According to a survey by Gallup, businesses with the highest employee engagement are 23% more profitable than those with the lowest employee engagement.

Toxic Company Culture Characteristics

So, what does a harmful company culture look like? It may be glaringly obvious in some areas, but other symptoms can be subtle. Here are a few signs you may have a bad company culture:

• • Team members don’t feel safe to communicate openly with leaders

• • Illegal, dishonest or unethical behaviors (especially by leadership)

• • High team member turnover rate

• • Pressure from leaders to constantly work long hours, not take vacation days, and neglect work-life balance

• • Team members constantly fear failure or being fired without warning

• • Gossip and work-related drama

• • Passive-aggressive communication

Examples Of Companies With Good Cultures

Every company, big or small, has a workplace culture. Here are some examples of healthy company cultures:

This online shoe giant consistently gets ranked as one of the best corporate cultures in America—and that doesn’t happen by accident. When describing their company culture, Zappos said, “We’ve learned that if you identify your company’s core values, hire by them, onboard team members by them, and truly live by them; then your business is on a long-term path to success, profit and growth.” From its hiring practices to customer service to the work environment, everything and everyone reinforce the company’s core values.

Named one of Inc. magazine’s Best Workplaces of 2020 and listed in FlexJobs’ Top 100 Companies to Watch for Remote Jobs in 2021, the virtual staffing firm has built a highly engaged team and award-winning culture—even while working 100% remote. BELAY attributes that to knowing how culture is really built: with values, not gimmicks. “[Our culture is] not Ping-Pong tables, fully stocked beer fridges, and nap pods,” said BELAY. “We instill our mission and values of gratitude, teamwork, vision, passion, fun and God into every one of our nearly 1,200 remote workforce team members.”

Read More: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/business/grow-remarkable-company-culture

Branding your business is common, but today, branding yourself personally is also very important. To build an effective personal brand entails building your own public image by harmonizing who you actually are and how others see you.

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Your personal brand should communicate your unique attributes, highlight your strengths, build trust and establish a reputation in your current or desired industry. Personal branding is one’s story. That story helps you achieve a competitive advantage, whether in your professional or personal endeavors. Building a personal brand doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process that demands much effort and a good plan. Here are six steps to build a successful personal brand:

Pick A Niche

The first step to building a successful personal brand is choosing a niche, or target market. You’ve probably heard the saying, “If you try to appeal everyone, you’ll end up appealing no one.” That’s why you must first focus on a specific niche to build a successful personal brand. Here are four questions to ask in order to choose your niche:

• • To which customers will your product or services most appeal? From a personal branding standpoint, a strong brand cannot appeal to every single customer. Identify the customers who will make the core of your business. After identifying these customers, customize your brand for maximum appeal.

• • Which traits make your business unique? In order to effectively position yourself within a marketplace, you need to determine what attributes separate you from everyone else. What does your business offer that no one else in the market can? By answering this question, you’ll be able to highlight your unique value propositions and build your personal brand.

• • What problems or needs does your business address? Knowing the frustrations or needs your business addresses is a vital part of your personal brand. Ask your target customers what they appreciate most about your business. Use their answers to improve your messaging.

• • How much competition will you be facing? Before settling on a niche and building a brand to reach that market, determine how much competition you’ll be facing. If a less competitive niche is not available, focus on differentiating yourself from the competition.

If you answer these four questions, you’ll be able to choose the right niche. Some might struggle to choose a specific niche out of fear of limiting themselves. However, it’s best to invest your time and energy into an audience that is more likely to give you the desired outcome.

Find The Biggest Influencers

It’s difficult for new brands to get attention on the internet. This is because nearly all businesses are online, which creates a lot of noise. This is why some brands choose to use influencers. Influencers are people who have earned respect and recognition in their chosen niche and usually have a large audience and recognized authority among their followers.

Read More: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2020/03/11/how-to-build-a-successful-personal-brand-in-six-simple-steps/?sh=5f0bec1942c4

Each year, one in five adults in the U.S. will experience mental illness. Yet only one in three who need help will get it. As a result, many people will either miss work or will get less done on the job. The latter is known as presenteeism, when people go to work while struggling with physical or mental health issues. This is why focusing on employee mental health is so important for your bottom line.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion per year in lost productivity. But WHO also found that for every $1 spent on treating common mental health concerns, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity.

According to the Society for Human Resources Management, many employers are enhancing emotional and mental health benefits. Types of support can range from managing stress, to treating invisible disabilities such as anxiety and depression.

The potential benefits of supporting employee mental health include:

• • Increased productivity: Research shows that nearly 86 percent of employees treated for depression report improved work performance. And in some studies, treatment of depression has been shown to reduce absenteeism and presenteeism by 40 to 60 percent.

• • Increased retention: In a 2019 survey of more than 1,500 employees nationwide, more than a third of the respondents said they had left a job due at least in part to mental health. Of these, 59 percent said mental health was the primary reason.

• • Decreased health care and disability costs: According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, rates of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases are twice as high in adults with serious mental illness.

The connection between physical health and mental health prompted the American Heart Association’s CEO Roundtable to release a report called “Mental Health: A Workforce Crisis.” It urges employers to provide comprehensive programs for the prevention and treatment of mental illness. “The cost of doing nothing is higher than investing in evidence-based prevention and treatment,” the report found.

How Your Company Can Support Employee Mental Health

A nationwide employee survey found that what people want the most in the workplace are trainings and more easily accessible information about where to go or who to ask for mental health support. A more open culture about mental health at work is also important to employees, according to the survey.

With those findings in mind, here are five ways your company can support employee mental health:

1. Understand How Mental Health Impacts Your Employees

“It’s important for managers to be trained to recognize the signs of emotional distress so they can react in a supportive rather than a punitive way,” says Jerome Schultz, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School. “Some employees need people around them to say, ‘Hey, I see you might be feeling stressed. Maybe now is a good time to try some breathing exercises or go take a walk.’”

Here are some proactive steps you can take to understand and assess your employees’ mental health:

• • Make mental health training mandatory for your company’s leaders to help them be more aware of and invested in this aspect of their employees’ well-being.

• • Train managers on what to do if they see signs of emotional distress or substance abuse.

Read More: https://www.understood.org/en/articles/workplace-mental-health-5-ways-to-support-employee-wellness

The tumultuous last 18 months in commercial real estate has, like so many other industries, empowered workers during a talent shortage, pushing CRE firms to ramp up compensation and benefits in response. “There’s a real war for talent, and it’s impacting the things we do,” CBRE CEO Bob Sulentic said during an earnings call last week.

Many of the forces at play in the larger labor market, including pandemic-era burnout, the worker shortages and the so-called Great Resignation, have impacted CRE and the market for specific roles within the industry.

“There’s a push for a culture revolution within companies,” said Building Careers President Carly Glova, who heads a recruiting firm focused on executive CRE talent, and finds more candidates expecting expanded benefits that support better work-life balance, along with higher pay. “If I’m not immediately impressed by the numbers or growth opportunities or culture, I’m looking elsewhere.”

Many firms have struggled to fill starting-level positions and property management roles. Roughly 60% to 70% of all CRE firms face talent and recruitment challenges, according to CEL & Associates CEO Christopher Lee.

Existing issues with the talent pipeline are making it harder and slower to pivot during a period of flux, potentially weakening any recoveries. In response, companies are reassessing compensation packages to make sure their offers and benefits stand out and suggest they are making long-term investments in new hires.

“As a whole, commercial real estate hasn’t made employee benefits and culture a priority,” Glova said.

Firms are discovering the high costs of recruiting and replacing top talent, CRE Recruiting principal and founder Allison Weiss said, which can range from tens of thousands of dollars to twice someone’s annual salary.

“Extensive turnover can cause reputational or employer brand damage, loss of client relationships, and low morale among remaining team members shouldering the burden of additional work,” Weiss said.

Increased competition — especially for roles in in-demand sectors like industrial and life sciences and those that involve more technical knowledge or expertise with proptech — are pushing firms to offer more, CRE recruiting experts told Bisnow.

Glova said the fact that many developers are starting to reassess comp packages, going beyond leadership and management to offer bonuses and additional pay to positions across the board, suggests more competition is helping workers. She highlighted a San Diego-based firm, H.G. Fenton, that has prioritized a robust HR and benefits program for the past decade, with a lifestyle and culture team in place that focuses on employee satisfaction and retention.

“Salary increases have been dramatic,” she added. Now is the time of the year when annual bonuses are on the table, so firms are trying to be extra aggressive when recruiting, she added, to make sure new hires don’t merely come on board and then leave early in the year.

Glova said she is seeing great demand, and significant salary increases, for construction managers; one recent candidate saw a 20% increase in their compensation when they moved to another firm.

“Middle management is where most companies are hiring,” Glova said. “Salaries have gone up, but not to the same extent as executives. There’s a little more willingness to ramp up and train for these roles.”

Firms feel pressure to pay higher salaries to keep and retain talent, Keller Augusta Senior Managing Director Kaitlin Kincaid said. The recruiting firm’s recent survey found half of employees considering a career change.

There is also increasing demand for “jack-of-all-trade” roles, with job postings asking for more multifaceted talent, reflective of the more tech-focused nature of many jobs. There is heated competition among larger firms for proptech and data analysis and analyst roles, favoring younger talent and sales staff with more tech expertise.

To woo employees, firms are going beyond traditional benefits, incorporating wellness, mentorship and training opportunities, and mission-driven programs, Kincaid said. Firms are also open to recruiting outside of traditional avenues for high-demand roles, which may place them in competition with the compensation and benefits packages of other industries.

But there are limits to the industrywide benefits boost. For instance, expanded childcare is far from guaranteed, Glova said. While a norm is forming around a hybrid, three in-office days-per-week schedule, that increased flexibility still leaves some gaps for caregivers. According to research from CREW, workplace shifts have had a significant impact on female employment in CRE; while 38% of members of the national women’s real estate network felt the pandemic has stalled progress for women in the industry, 39% said they’ve seen better compensation.

“There is still a big delta between what employees want and what companies are willing to provide,” Glova said. “It’s closing, but there’s still a gap. Companies need to be more flexible with what they’re considering.”