In today’s competitive job market, it’s more important than ever to prioritize becoming a great place to work. Today’s workforce is searching for employers that value purpose, flexibility, and inclusivity. If you’re looking to recruit and retain top talent but don’t know where to start, here are three ways you can become an employer of choice:
1. Provide Inclusive Policies & Benefits
With a vast range of individual and family situations, it’s essential to provide benefits that meet your employees’ needs wherever they are in life. Your workplace policies and employee benefits should align with your diversity and inclusion goals. Look at your benefits annually and ask yourself if they reflect your workforce’s needs, keeping in mind disabilities, gender, sex, age, and family dynamics. Offering Telehealth, mental health resources, paid family leave, and wellness programs can help contribute to a more inclusive benefit strategy.
2. Offer Work Flexibility
Employees are finding the benefits of remote work both professionally and personally, and today’s workforce wants the ability to have flexibility where they work. Whether you offer full remote work options or a hybrid policy (like Nextep), potential employees want to know you’ll work with them to build some flexibility into their work schedules.
3. Rally your workforce around your purpose
Define your purpose
When it comes to defining your purpose, figure out what big picture things really matter to your people and your organization as a whole. For Nextep, we have a why statement (elevating the employment experience and enriching people’s lives) that’s at the heart of everything we do. It’s the why behind our best-in-class customer service to our clients, and it extends to a few key issues that we’re passionate about as an organization: mental health, giving back to our community, and diversity and inclusion.
Some examples of how Nextep elevates & enriches
Mental health is really important to Nexteppers. Our leadership team has created a culture of wellness by frequently talking about the importance of prioritizing mental health, promoting open dialogue about mental health in the workplace, and encouraging our people to take time to get the help they need. Nextep also sponsors the Calm app for all Nextep employees and has Calm rooms where Nexteppers can use their apps to practice mindfulness and manage stress during the workday.
Giving back is at the heart of Nextep. As participants in the Pledge 1% movement and through our Nextep Charitable Foundation, we’ve hosted Nextep Gives Back events, contributed hundreds of hours to nonprofits, and donated $100,000 every year to organizations in our community. We have dedicated PTO for our people to give back, opportunities for the kiddos of our employees to give back, and provide free services to startup nonprofits with fewer than 10 employees!
Lastly, diversity and inclusion are vital to Nextep. As a company, we’ve prioritized inclusive recruiting practices, diverse benefits, and pay equity and we help our clients do the same. For the last two years, we’ve also prioritized giving back to the Black community. In 2020, we made and matched employee donations to organizations committed to uplifting the Black community. This year, we continued to partner with several of those organizations and continued our Equity Council, which is focused on highlighting diverse organizations and coordinating volunteer opportunities.
Need More Guidance?
Nextep’s HR experts are always ready to help you become an employer of choice! Schedule a meeting with us to see how our pros can help arm your company with the next-level HR support, benefits, and technology you need to attract top talent.
