A mentor once told me that company culture is how your employees’ stomachs feel on Sunday night. Steamboat is lucky to have the wide variety of businesses, services and organizations we do for a community our size. With most businesses having 10 or fewer employees, the Steamboat Springs Chamber knows how busy these small businesses are — and how daunting it can feel to focus on anything other than business operations.

 

But the truth is, the culture of your workplace is too important to leave to chance.

A large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology demonstrates that not only is a cut-throat environment harmful to productivity over time, but that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees and the bottom line. The American Psychological Association estimates that more than $500 billion is siphoned off from the U.S. economy because of workplace stress, and 550 million workdays are lost each year due to stress on the job.

 

Disengagement is also a real danger to employees and the bottom line. Engagement in work is associated with feeling valued, secure, supported and respected. Disengagement is costly. In studies by the Queens School of Business and by the Gallup Organization, disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents and 60% more errors and defects. In organizations with low employee engagement scores, they experienced 18% lower productivity, 16% lower profitability, 37% lower job growth and 65% lower share price over time. Importantly, businesses with highly engaged employees enjoyed 100% more job applications.

The business landscape has experienced a seismic shift since 2020. When, where and how many of us work has evolved, and business and employee values have shifted. Year after year, our members rank employee retention and attraction as one of the main barriers to growth.

 

Our job at the Chamber is to respond to these challenges and find solutions for our members. Attracting and retaining top talent is a top priority for most businesses, but not every company can compete in a salary-driven contest. Fortunately, every organization can bolster its workplace culture to create a positive, supportive atmosphere that can mean as much, or more than, money. We produce resources for membership like the Family Forward Guidebook and the DEI Toolkit, and new this year, we are proud to present a new summit focusing on intentional workplace culture, Empower Yampa Valley.

Empower Yampa Valley is a summit designed to bring together business owners, managers, employees, and community leaders and equip them with strategies for handling today’s most pressing workplace issues and strategies for creating a workplace culture where everyone can thrive. This year’s summit will cover neurodiversity, working with different generations, hybrid and remote work environments, mental health, unconscious bias, and having tough conversations.

 

We hope you will join us June 27 for Empower Yampa Valley. We all affect our workplace culture, and we can all help to shape and evolve it. Wishing you peaceful Sunday nights and work that fills your cup! Read on the Pilot website >>