Proof That Employees Have the Most Long-Term Impact on Results

Firas Kittanesh gets it. A serial entrepreneur, and co-founder and CEO of Amerisleep, an eco-friendly luxury mattress company, he has grown the business to serve hundreds of thousands of customers across the globe with no loans or investors.  Yes, you read that right.

His philosophy?  “Your ideas and vision will drive your company from its infancy, but it’s your employees who will have the most impact on the long-term performance of your business.  Our business has thrived because we recruit and retain talent who quickly adopt leadership roles. With their help, we’ve seen our sales multiply year-over-year. By developing a company culture our employees enjoy, empowering them to accomplish more at their jobs and incorporating social good into our business processes, we’ve established a brand our team members are proud to work for.”

In a recent article in Inc.com, Kittanesh laid out three strategies you can use to make your company a place your top performers will never want to leave:

– Build a dynamic company culture. Strong company cultures that attract passionate and talented employees don’t arise out of thin air. They have to be strategically created, built from the top down and nurtured over time. Otherwise, your organization’s culture will be a disorganized combination of competing ideas with no guiding philosophy behind them. When you know in detail what your company culture is, then you can hire people who will be a good fit for it. This is vital since studies show culture fit is a crucial component of employee retention.

– Set clear expectations and empower employees to exceed them.  The first big responsibility you have to your employees is to establish ambitious, yet feasible expectations for them. Hardworking, talented employees want to work with their colleagues to achieve great things, but they’re also wary of any company that doesn’t have defined milestones. Once you let your employees know exactly what will be expected of them, your second major task is to empower them to achieve those goals. Give them the tools they need to thrive in their role, whether it is technology, training or intra-office communication. 

• Highlight your company’s social impact.  Today’s workers are looking for much more than just a paycheck. They want to work for an organization that has defined values and routinely makes a difference in society.  Amerisleep builds beds to last decades and takes an eco-friendly approach to making  mattresses with plant-based materials, a zero-emissions manufacturing process and shipping methods to minimize their carbon footprint. Businesses like this increase their likelihood of retaining top talent when they support social causes their team members care about.

WHAT CAN I DO?  It all starts with culture.  By developing a company culture employees enjoy, empowering them to accomplish more at their jobs and incorporating social good into your business processes, you can establish a brand your  team members are proud to work for and can’t imagine leaving.  If you have embarked on a culture journey, take a pulse check and ask yourself if you are doing everything above.  If you have not embarked on a culture journey, I’d love to partner with you to help.  Great cultures are not difficult, they are deliberate.

Jill Christensen is an employee engagement expert, best-selling author, and international keynote speaker. She is a 2017 Top 100 Global Employee Engagement Influencer, authored the best-selling book, If Not You, Who? Cracking the Code of Employee Disengagement, and works with the best and brightest global leaders to improve productivity and retention, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth. Jill can be reached at +1.303.999.9224 or  jill@jillchristensenintl.com.