How to Build a Sense of Community Within your Business

The word “Community” tends to make us think externally.

It could be a neighbourhood, a football club fan base, a political party affiliation or a group of individuals who all enjoy a specific hobby together.
Community, though, can be an internally focused word, and as a business owner or leader, to help ensure you foster the best possible corporate environment, you should be thinking of it in just this way.

A 2020 MyKindaFuture study, shared by Workplace Insight shared that “as many as 80% of those who don’t feel a sense of community within their workplace are considering leaving their jobs within the next 12 months.” Community is critical to retention – nay, imperative. Take this statistic from a logical standpoint as opposed to an emotional one and think that without a sense of community, you may have to lose, re-hire and re-train up to 8 of your 10 employees. That’s a loss of already-spent onboarding funds, a loss of productivity that will surely hit while you wait for replacements, an HR cost for recruiting, and brand-new onboarding expenses. Invest in your corporate community now to avoid this very real scenario down the line.

Phrases like, “We’re family here” have quite rapidly phased out in recent years as employees have expressed across all sectors that it feels far too insincere, and like an emotional bribe to rope team members into doing tasks that truly aren’t their responsibility or within their capacity. Replacing the sentiment have been thoughts like, “Strong community”, “Strong brand identity” and “Strong corporate culture”.

We’re big fans of all three (and are rather glad that they’ve replaced the family line), but today, we’re going to focus on “Community”, and some of the best ways you can both create and foster it within your organisation.

Volunteer Together:

Very few things can bond coworkers effectively and in a meaningful way like volunteering can. If you have the means and a large enough team, try to divide your employee base up by causes they’re most passionate about. If you don’t have a large workforce, just try to find one cause area everyone can rally around. When you encourage employees to volunteer together, you’re not only saying that you care about their passions, well-being and how they connect– you’re showing it.

Make Community Common:

Nothing will end your attempts at “creating community” faster than if your tries are disingenuous. As a leader, make yourself available and present in the office or workplace as much as is feasible and ask questions. Encourage conversation by creating conversation. If work is being done, continue to encourage fun, and when a crisis strikes in your community or world, make it a common place to initiate discussions about the hard things. When employees know that they can come to you and fellow teammates for everything from a joke to a mini therapy session about the state of the world, they truly feel as though work is just an extension of their chosen community(ies).

Be Transparent:

Community cannot exist truly and beautifully without deeper connection, and connection requires honesty, vulnerability, and transparency. Give honest answers when your coworkers ask how you’re doing on a personal level. Be straightforward with business standings, even if it’s not exactly where you’ve hoped to be. Candid, honest conversations breed community and your workplace will be better because of it.

Bring Community in:

Name a better way to foster community than to welcome community! Should your physical office spaces allow (or should you have garden space that feels appropriate for hosting), consider welcoming in members of your community? Maybe it’s welcoming in partners and families of employees for a cookout, or maybe it’s in hosting a town-hall meeting for members of your geographical community. However, you see fit, foster community by physically welcoming it in.

Encourage Employee Resource Groups:

We all have different passions, and regardless of how diverse they may be, it’s almost a guarantee that we can all find at least one cause area we’re passionate about those overlaps. Ask your employee base what speaks to them and offer the chance for them to create corporate (or corporately sponsored, publicly-open) resource groups around those things. Giving team members the chance to lead initiatives on things they connect with as an individual, not just an employee, is a huge step toward fostering a healthy, active, fulfilled community.

Truly, you can foster community within your workplace in hundreds of ways, but these above five options take nothing extra besides a little initiative to get the ball rolling; no extra funds, nothing that cuts into your productivity – just five win-win situations to help you, and everyone who makes up your business, thrive.