5 HR Mistakes that Will Blow Up Your Company Culture

No one intentionally sabotages company culture, regardless of whether they're aware of its importance or not. However, it's easy to do so unwillingly if you're not actively promoting it. 

There are dangers associated with unknowingly sabotaging company culture. To name a few, it promotes unethical behavior, high turnover rates, less quality of potential hires, conflict in the workplace, workers not committed to doing their best every day, and an office of people disinterested in contributing to company success.

Commitment to actively avoiding the five biggest "don'ts" when it comes to company culture will go a long way in preventing these issues.

Ignoring Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is fitting in personal interests or family into one's life as much as one works. Ignoring work-life balance leads to negative consequences on company culture because employees:

• Stop caring and put quantity over quality of work
• Feel work is less meaningful, so they're less motivated
• Make less progress in goals
• Are less committed and more agitated
• Are likely to suffer from work-family conflicts

You want to make sure employees love you and never want to leave, so don't ignore the importance of an excellent work-life balance. You can encourage a good work-life balance by promoting health, flextime if possible, staying informed about employee needs, and looking out for burnouts.

Alienating Employees

Cliques inside the office that alienate employees are detrimental to the work environment. Inclusion and diversity drive progress, innovation, work performance, and more. On the other hand, excluding employees will prevent them from sufficiently doing their job and incite a hostile work environment that violates U.S. labor laws.

Alienation is a form of harassment and discrimination that violates laws like:

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA)
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)

Keep employees aware of common ways employment laws are accidentally broken to avoid legal issues and prevent consequences like less employee engagement and collaboration.

Leave HR with Busywork

The HR team is essential in forming and managing a strong company culture. HR's primary focus should be on taking care of employees and maintaining an environment that promotes better work ethics and overall satisfaction. When HR is stuck taking care of mundane administrative burdens, they don't have the time to create a great company culture. 

SHRM names a few ways HR can build and manage a strong culture:

• Reinforce organizational values
• Ensure that organizational ethics are defined, understood, and practiced
• Enable communication and feedback channels
• Clearly define roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities
• Provide continuous learning and training
• Recognize and solve individual and organizational issues

Offering Poor Benefits Packages

Poor benefits packages hurts employee morale as well as employee retention and recruiting. If employees don't feel valued by the company, they're not going to add value to the company.

A few statistics that support the importance of offering good benefits packages:

• 80 percent of employees would stay at a job with benefits rather than accept one that offered more pay and no benefits
• 55 percent of employees would be somewhat likely to take a job with lower compensation but a more robust benefits package
• Retention (72 percent) and recruiting (58 percent) were the top reasons for increasing benefits

Working Through Lunch

Sometimes business is booming, and the extra help from employees working through lunch is necessary for hitting goals and meeting deadlines. While it is okay to do it once in a while, regularly encouraging employees to work through lunch can cause consequences that make the extra effort not worth it. It can create dissidence and sabotage positive company culture. 

Research in 2018 reveals that many employees feel obligated to skip lunch:

• Almost 20 percent of employee respondents worry their bosses won't think they are hardworking if they take regular lunch breaks, and 13 percent worry they will be judged by their co-workers
• 22 percent of bosses confirm that they feel employees who take a regular lunch break are less hardworking

Aside from general health concerns associated with working through lunch, the Tork survey also uncovered that nearly 90% of North American employees claim that taking lunch breaks helps them feel refreshed and ready to work. Strong company culture begins with leadership breaking the negative stigma around taking lunch breaks.

Employee Engagement is The Key to Success

HR's role in making sure most of these "don'ts" never come to play is vital. HR works with leadership to align the company values and the organization's culture. HR should also incorporate it into management and employee training and make certain new hires encompass the same company values and culture.

Employee engagement is the key to success because it powers your employees to do their best at work happily, adhere to company goals and values, remain motivated and committed to their employer, and stay at their jobs. Fifty-six percent of millennials believe that an individual should stay at a single company for more than 20 years. 

Give them a reason to.

To learn more about how to keep employees engaged, download "6 Modern HR Strategies and Trends to Improve Employee Engagement (And 5 to Leave Behind)."