Establishing a strong workplace culture is no longer a nice-to-have in business.

It’s a must-have in today’s competitive marketplace.

Job seekers have never had more resources at their fingertips for finding job openings or for being found by recruiters. In a matter of seconds, anyone can open their smartphone on lunch break and have access to dozens or even hundreds of potential employment opportunities – including your current employees.

Then, “click” – they have just applied to go work for your competitor.

It’s that easy.

And let’s not forget about the demographics of the workforce right now. According to several sources, the Millennial generation will account for 75% of the working population by the year 2025.

There’s no secret that this generation wants and expects their work experience to be much different than previous generations. Like it or not, organizations must learn to adapt to this new generation of workers, or they will soon find it difficult to survive.

Wholesale distributors are no exception.

Many Millennials (not necessarily all of them) want certain perks in their working experience. The challenge is that these perks do not always fit easily into the wholesale distribution business model – at least for every role and position within the organization. It can be difficult for distributors to accommodate things like remote work and flexible schedules when they have storefronts and warehouse operations to run.

So, does this mean that our industry is doomed to miss out on top talent?

Not necessarily.

Fortunately, there are always things that distributors can do to compete.

Workplace culture is another BIG priority for Millennials, and this is something that leaders in wholesale distribution can control. In fact, many distributors already pride themselves on having a great workplace culture.

But how can culture truly be measured and communicated to the outside world?

The answer – an annual employee engagement survey.

The Major Benefits an Employee Engagement Survey Will Provide

Many third-party providers specialize in conducting employee engagement surveys for their clients. These surveys provide several major benefits:

• Certification
• Benchmarking
• Coaching & Consulting
• Continuous Improvement

Understanding these benefits will help organizations get the most out of this powerful tool.

Certification Drives Recruiting and Retention

Most people have probably seen organizations who have a logo proclaiming a “Certified Best Workplace” or “Great Place to Work” displayed all over their marketing materials. This draws the attention of job seekers like nothing else.

Especially, those top talented Millennials.

Most good employee engagement survey providers have a threshold or score for determining if an organization has an above average workplace culture. When the survey results come back above this threshold, the organization then becomes certified.

Once certified, your great workplace culture has been validated – congratulations!

The certification will also provide a sense of validation and pride in the existing employees who work hard each day to maintain the culture. Retention becomes more likely when this validation has been received and employees can see they are working in an above-average work environment.

When this level of excellence has been achieved and maintained year over year, it’s proof that the grass really isn’t greener elsewhere.

Benchmarking to Understand the Competition

Let’s be honest – we all want to know how we stack up to our competitors.

Another major benefit of doing employee engagement surveys is that good survey providers also work with hundreds or thousands of other organizations. This allows surveyors to benchmark their results against many other organizations in the marketplace.

In many cases, these results can be categorized by industry sector, company size, etc. This helps to provide insights and paint a strong picture of how well your organization is doing in comparison to the competition.

The Best Continuous Improvement Tool

All great leaders want to improve their organization.

But knowing where and how to improve is easier said than done.

If used properly and regularly, employee engagement surveys become a continuous improvement tool for organizations that use them. The feedback makes it easy for the leadership team to identify areas for improvement.

Each survey should then generate several actionable outcomes for the leadership team to tackle. When done annually, it’s amazing how quickly organizations can improve their culture by simply understanding where to focus their efforts – then act.

It quickly becomes the fuel that feeds strategic planning meetings.

Third-Party Coaching and Consulting Helps Navigate the Feedback

The results are in – now what?

The amount of information and feedback received on engagement surveys can be overwhelming for leadership teams to digest – even the best and brightest ones. This is especially true when the responses are mostly negative or worse than expected.

Most third-party survey providers have experienced experts on staff that can help coach you through your feedback with several different services:

• Leadership debriefing on results
• Facilitating employee focus groups to learn more
• Strategic planning and implementing action items

It’s easy for leadership teams to become stuck in the status quo when they’ve spent many years living inside of their own bubble. Having an outside perspective from a neutral third party can often be very helpful in guiding your organization in the right direction.

5 Tips for a Successful Employee Engagement Survey

If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you are sold on the benefits of conducting an engagement survey in your organization.

Here are five tips that will help your organization have a successful outcome:

Always use a third-party provider. Some things are best done in-house – this isn’t one of them. Your employees are more likely to be truthful when an outside organization is collecting their responses.

Seek the truth, not the score. The ultimate goal is to get honest responses from your team. A high score or certification is nice to receive, but it’s meaningless if the results don’t reflect the reality of what your employees are actually experiencing in their work environment.

Everyone should see the results. Total transparency is a big deal – good, bad and ugly. Nothing says, “We hear you!” more than having your leaders share, communicate and discuss the results with your teams at all levels of the organization.

Never ask for honest feedback and get upset when you receive it. Treat all feedback as a gift – be grateful for it. Getting upset at your employees or lashing back at them because of their responses will only ensure that you never get honest feedback again.

Don’t forget to celebrate your strengths. It’s easy to focus on the lowest scores or harshest criticisms from your team. Use your best feedback as a reason to celebrate and encourage everyone.

Sounds Great, So Where Can I Start?

As always, Distribution Strategy Group has you covered.

If you’re interested in learning more, the team at DSG have developed their own employee engagement survey as part of their analytics solutions. This tool will give you the valuable insights you’ll need to ensure that your organization can recruit and retain the best talent in the industry.

Contact the DSG team today to learn more:

• Phone: 303-898-8636
• Email: contact@distributionstrategy.com