The Culture Advantage: How Employee-First Brands Can Work Better to Outperform Their Competitors

It is the dream: hearing your employees rave about how much they love working for your company, knowing you are providing the best possible day for your team.

There is a sense of security in knowing your team is enthusiastic as it ensures employee engagement will stay high, creating a workplace that is renowned for its culture.

So how can you implement a people-first strategy that gives your company a competitive advantage?

People-first culture

Ultimately, putting your employee experience at the top of your list of priorities is a business strategy. Nothing says "successful company" like a workplace with high employee retention, especially when this often results in improved customer service.

As Harvard Business School has stated, the key to your competitive advantage framework is employee retention. Having a precise plan for this is crucial, as instilling the value of your employees is the way to ensure they are motivated and loyal to your company in the long run.

Their long-term growth as a team will ultimately, therefore, be your own. You should view this as an investment in the future of your brand performance.

Ultimately, keeping your staff in a competitive landscape saves you the mounting costs of recruitment, and you will find that the loyalty you inspire means your staff really deliver a return on investment.

Your staff = your cheerleaders

Investing in your staff can improve their performance metrics, making it a high-impact, low-cost leadership strategy that will make your team feel like they are being valued. The power of your staff feeling like they are important cannot be underestimated.

After all, with companies such as Glassdoor and LinkedIn, it is easy enough for employees to share their experiences with the world, and keeping your staff happy is an easy way to make sure your team are your top brand ambassadors.

This will not only help with the recruitment of loyal staff, but it should improve customer loyalty in the long run, as the more your staff are invested in your company, the better they will be at those front-line interactions.

A competitive strategy

Here are a few tips on how to build an employee-first culture throughout your company that will bring you long-term success.

1. Encourage a healthy work-life balance

No one wants to feel their work encroaches on their personal life. Simple moves like clarifying that there is no obligation to read emails after hours and offering flexible working patterns where possible are great ways to keep your team happy.

Work with human resources to create a happy workplace that works with your company goals and gives your staff the chance to keep their lives on track when outside the workplace.

2. Utilize customer feedback

If you're looking to land potential customers, you will already know the power of reviews. In an information-laden world, no one has to buy a product or invest in a service with their eyes closed.

By using reviews as a performance metric, you can place customer experiences front and center, making your staff aware of the importance of getting good feedback as one of the differentiation strategies to make your company stand out above your competitors.

Moreover, making your customers feel they are listened to will increase the chance of re-purchase. Deciding your target market is a loyal customer base can be one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.

3. Listen to employee feedback

If you are looking to make your employees happy, it makes sense to go straight to the source and ask how. Throwing it over to your team when it comes to decisions about things like employee development can ensure your team is always on the same page as you, as they will benefit from having opportunities for growth that they actively desire.

Offering anonymised surveys is a great way to get honest opinions from your staff and truly get to the bottom of what it is that your staff most want from you as an employer.

4. Rewards

If your team consistently meets its key performance indicators, they will want to be rewarded accordingly. Whether you are looking for high conversion rates in sales or an overall financial performance metric, you can inspire your staff with the power of extrinsic motivation by offering incentives, whether financial or otherwise.

Ensuring this is a sustained investment is important—giving one burst of rewards will not have the same impact as providing regular incentives, which will create a permanent sense of the company giving back to their staff.

5. Culture of collaboration

A true people-first approach will acknowledge the importance of community and the role it plays in bringing a sense of belonging to the individual. Encouraging your staff to network with each other, whether in person or online via messaging and meeting apps, is a good way to create a sense of company identity.

It could also give you a competitive advantage if the collaboration increases the rate of innovation at your company. Many minds working together can often produce the greatest results, so fostering connections between your staff could, in fact, give your company the fresh take you need to achieve that competitive success.

The power of Edge

The Edge platform is here to make so much of this easier. Our real-time sales contests are here to motivate your team with minimal input from you.

Contact us today for a free demo of how our platform can work for you and join over 5,000 businesses that are benefitting from our software.