The performance and productivity of employees are of utmost importance for any business organization. However, at times, employees are burdened with their own personal problems restricting them from performing their best.

Psychological problems, legal issues, substance abuse, emotional stress, physical stress, and other personal troubles can reduce the ability to complete tasks. It can result in a lack of focus lowering productivity, increased absenteeism, and higher health care expenses.

An Employee Assistance Program is what you need to tackle these issues and take care of the personal needs of you and your employees.

What is an Employee Assistance Program?

When employees are challenging personal issues and need to cope with the same, an employee assistance program comes into play.

The program is employer-sponsored and offers solutions to eliminate the negative impact caused by work-related or personal issues. An EAP can help to lessen the expenses you incur on employee health, increase the productivity and morale.

When an EAP is introduced, employees have the access to communicate with trained counselors 24 hours a day either via phone or face-to-face.

What is covered under Employee Assistance Program?

The Employee Assistance Program is different for every organization, however certain elements are common. While some programs may only be restricted to the abuse of alcohol and drugs, others cover a larger scope addressing a range of troubles and issues. Generally, the issues covered under EAPs are:

  • Substance abuse
  • Consumption of alcohol or drugs
  • Problems in marriage
  • Stress management
  • Child/Senior citizen care
  • Gambling cessation
  • Financial troubles
  • Legal issues
  • Psychiatric or psychological issues
  • Crisis intervention
  • Health issues
  • Eating disorders

How is an Employee Assistance Program beneficial?

There are very few people who do not face problems in day-to-day life. A problem hampers the physical and mental ability of an individual thereby affecting the way they perform. Let us take a look at how an EAP can benefit employees and improve their productivity:

1. Confidentiality

EAPs give employees the opportunity to discuss sensitive issues in confidence with a resource. The employer is not aware of when and why the service has been utilized and therefore, the employee does not have to worry about being judged, or having put his or her job in danger. Chances of a potential black mark that acts as a hindrance to the job are low.

2. Instant Assistance

An EAP hotline is available 24 hours a day. This means employees usually do not have to wait for assistance. When the need for an appointment with the medical practitioner or counselor arises, the same can be instantly fixed.

Moreover, since this is a service offered by the organization, the employee can confidently use the work phone to call and discuss their issues.

3. Preventing Escalation

Stress at work can sometimes result in conflicts with peers and fellow team members. It can also escalate to become a challenging situation requiring the intervention of the senior management and implying a stricter action.

In the existence of an EAP, employees can consult counselors in the early stages of a problem preventing it from transforming into something serious.

4. Tackling Personal Problems

Many times, job performance is hampered because of problems outside of the workplace. An EAP helps people cope with their personal problems as well.

Employees struggling with substance abuse, marital problems, legal issues, grief over a loved one’s loss, or depression can also seek the assistance of a counselor through the employee assistance program.

The purpose of the program is to give employees a platform where they can find resolutions to their problems or at least obtain some peace of mind so that their job efficiency is not hampered.

5. Employer Advantages

Employers also benefit from an EAP. Since employees can easily vent out their problems and find solutions to the same, absenteeism or a lower productivity is avoided.

The workforce is happy and remains motivated to perform. The costs for health insurance plans are also diminished because the EAP is available for dealing with stress-related illnesses.

In conclusion, an employee assistance program is required in the workplace to keep employees free from any kinds of personal or work-related challenges. This way they are able to improve performance and remain efficient and motivated.

Company culture originates from the management and then goes down to different employees in an organization. As such, the company culture takes care of most of the employee activities, interests, and behaviours.

If you as a business owner take efficient managerial decisions and recruit people who can best suit your requirements, you are bound to have a productive and healthy corporate culture, just the way you want.

Here’s a list of distinct types of corporate cultures evident in different companies across the globe. Whether you manage a small, medium or large company, you will be able to notice some similar core values and also cherry-pick some others to integrate them with your current managerial strategy.

1. Strong Leadership

The foundation of this corporate culture lies in the hands of leaders – both existing and upcoming. Leadership training, coaching programs, and mentorship programs are adapted and focused upon.

Existing leaders invest their time and effort in fostering subordinates to become the next leaders. Employees who perform well are given the opportunity to rise and take leadership positions of their own.

It may seem that a strong corporate structure is important for a foundation of strong leadership. However, this is not necessarily true.

An organization where each individual is trained and motivated to be a competent leader can successfully operate on the culture of leadership.

2. Role-Playing

When the corporate culture is that of role-playing, the focus is laid on specialists. What is important is the skill you possess.

Every employee is trusted to be responsible for the project they are appointed to take care of.
Hiring in organizations that adopt role-playing culture is very selective.

This is because only those who possess exceptional skills are hired. Wages are also high because the selected employees have been thoroughly tested and trained for a particular activity, carefully evaluating the mastery of their craft.

A role-playing culture is generally observed in teams with web and software developers since they are capable of writing specific codes for computer programming.

3. Excellence in Customer Service

As the name suggests, this corporate culture focuses on the customer. The ‘customer is always right’ approach is adopted by all teams across and each employee, whether facing the customer or not is bound to keep customer satisfaction in mind.

Product manufacturers focus on the ease of use, website developers ensure that the website is user-friendly, sales teams frequently conduct customer surveys to understand feedback, and customer ratings and reviews are regularly monitored.

Marketing teams are active on social media to respond to customer queries and the phones lines are always available.

Amazon is one such example with its focus on customer satisfaction and customer service excellence.

4. Sales

A sales culture concentrates on accomplishing quarterly sales targets and goals. Every team member must have working product knowledge and must strive to perform activities that help to generate revenue and profits for the company.

A combination of the customer service and sales culture approach can prove to be extremely fruitful for the growth and success of a company.

5. Empowerment

As part of this corporate culture, the employee is given utmost value. Be it a senior-level employee or an employee of lower ranks, each one is made to feel that their contribution is vital for the organization.

Wages and reward schemes are prepared generously keeping the demands and requirements of the employees in mind. In times of a conflict, employees can easily reach out to their superiors and discuss their issues.

Salary increment, medical leaves, and position change requests are considered with genuine understanding.

6. Power-driven

Here the focus is on intense competition among employees. Each individual is devising their own strategy to acquire power. The entire focus is on – the survival of the fittest. Such organizations don’t intend to accomplish company goals since power culture is dominant.

A typical example of power-driven corporate culture can be noticed in insurance sales, financial consulting agencies, and investment banks where individuals are constantly battling for self-growth.

7. Innovation

When conventional ideas take a back seat and a constant attempt is made to stay in line with the changing trends and demands of the society, it is an innovation-based corporate culture. Each one is challenged to think out-of-the-box and create something magical for the organization.

Hierarchies and routes of formal communication are abandoned for sharing ideas that can make a difference.

8. All-Stars

This one is a stricter version of the role-playing culture and is often seen in startups. Employees are selectively hired purely on the basis of exceptional skills and job positions are created only when 100% necessary.

The team size is generally smaller and every individual is an all-star or all-rounder employee taking care of several activities at one time.

9. Task-Oriented

A task-oriented organization focuses on smaller teams handling specific goals and activities. These teams must smoothly function with each other and carry out the tasks assigned to them in an efficient manner.

The hiring process also involves an interaction with several team members and most of the day-to-day operations are tackled in conference rooms with specific team allotments.

10. Mission-Based

A mission-based corporate culture is popular amongst not-for-profit organizations and startups. These employees are passionate about what they do and sometimes neglect personal commitments and work-life balance on account of company goals.

They devote their time and effort to the activities they have been assigned with and ensure that work is completed to utmost satisfaction. Communication with clients, partners, associates, shareholders, and investors is extremely strong in such mission-driven culture organizations.

While it is pretty obvious that the workplace culture you adopt in your organization will be of your own choice, educating yourself on the different types of corporate cultures is a good idea.

A good work environment is essential to company’s growth and success. Bain & Company reported that companies with more engaged workforce grew revenue 2.5x more than companies with a less engaged one.

A toxic work environment on the other hand drags down your company’s growth. A bad culture kills employee morale, pulls down the office energy and perpetuates a sense of incompetence.

It is hard to define a toxic environment but here are some signs that your office culture is turning negative:

  • Low employee morale
  • Sluggish rate of project completion
  • Frequent miscommunication
  • Blame games
  • Employee resentment
  • Absenteeism
  • High turnover

How does a company come to the point of having a toxic work environment? After all nobody planned to have a bad work culture, right? Not planning for a healthy work culture is actually the reason for landing up in such a situation. A good culture has to be actively nurtured by leadership and personnel management in a company.

More often than not the company culture is a reflection of business leadership. This is made clear by cases like Uber which gave excessive power to its co-founder Travis Kalanick and had to face numerous allegations last year.

For others like Amazon, a stressful work environment is just by-product of their value to be the best at any cost.

How can you bring back your company culture after it has become toxic? Obviously something has gone wrong down the line. Your first step is to inspect your journey and pin point the mistakes that happened. More often than not there will be many things that require change.

Following are some effective ways to clean out toxicity and have a healthy, happy environment again:

  • Improve communication

Bad communication is the number one cause for a toxic culture. Companies with a bad culture usually have the grapevine channel stronger than formal communication. Make your formal communication robust, timely and transparent.

Share everything with employees officially so that there is no room left for rumors and fear. Not addressing a sensitive issue only makes it more likely for miscommunication. So share everything openly and honestly.

  • Review your Leadership

Clean up your system of people you are toxic. Is there someone in the top management who is perpetuating stressful work practices or politics? Work ethics always trickle down from the top management. Hence, it is important that your leadership shares the values of your companies.

Sometimes it may also be a handful of employees in the executive or mid-management who are contributing to the problem. Remember that no one is worth it if they bring fear, stress and politics to the office every morning.

  • Review the Company structure

Clash of roles, duplication of roles and complicated reporting structure can also be a source of conflict in office. Review your company hierarchy and remove and complications. Confusing structures give rise to unnecessary blame game and stress.

  • Take Employee Feedback

How do you take actions on the above points? How would you know which leaders are causing a problem and weather the reporting structure is confusing or not? The answer is employee feedback.

Change is company culture is for your employees and hence their opinion must be taken in the activity. It would be a good idea to take representatives from each department and form a ‘cultural change committee’.

This will spread a loud and clear message to everyone- ‘we have taken note of the bad culture and we are going to change it’. This itself will be enough to lift up the spirits.

What makes toxic culture worse is that everybody complains about it in the hallways but nobody admits it in front of the management.

Acknowledging the problem in open will be a signal that things are changing and management is being honest of the ground reality. 

  • Align Performance Management

Are your employees happy with the way their performance is reviewed and appraisal is done. Appraisal and recognition is a sensitive topic and a common cause of employee dissatisfaction in many companies.

Dissatisfied employees are more likely to spread negativity and spoil office environment. Therefore it is important to minimize the number of employees walking our disappointed from a performance review.

Some of the steps that HR can take are – having a clear KPI and break them down into quarterly or monthly goals. This way the employee has time to take corrective action instead of facing a shock end of the year. Also keep scoring as objective as possible to avoid favoritism in office.

Final Thoughts

A toxic environment is a downhill spiral of negativity which can turn your talent unproductive. Catching early signs of company culture going bad allows you to take corrective action quickly.

Since leadership is the main influencer of culture it is important to review top managers. Make your communication open and timely and review your company structure. Take continuous feedback from employee and involve them in correcting the culture.

In these days for a business to thrive, they should be updated with new technologies. Many businesses fail as they don’t track their employees’ working hours or some use outdated time and attendance monitoring systems that may lack on many areas. This may cause serious losses in the form of employee overpayment, time loss in the administrative and managerial areas.

So companies need to keep an eye on current and upcoming trends in time and attendance monitoring systems and implement those on their business to achieve success.

Below mentioned are some important key trends that are currently redefining the whole concept of employee time and attendance monitoring systems.

1. Automated Time Tracking

Automated time tracking is a new way of system which operates based on cloud, which can offer real-time access to data. This in turn can offer employees a sophisticated and user-friendly way rather than outdated time tracking process. Automated systems offer employee dashboards and versatile punch in ways, together with the options to punch in via employee’s smart phones or tablet devices.

2. WiFi-Enabled Attendance Tracking

WiFi-enabled attendance tracking systems will be able to support record keeping of large number of employees’ time and attendance. This system leverages biometric technology that helps to guarantee accuracy of time punching. This in turn will promote larger potency and accuracy. You can check more details here.

3. Tablet Kiosk App

Some companies make use of tablet kiosk application. Through tablet kiosk application, employees can easily clock in and out using their Apple mobile devices; a perfect resource for folks on the move.

With its increased practicality and sleek computer program,employers are able to track real-time productivity of their employees. Also, it can enhance productivity of employees and also can improve the overall efficiency of the organization.

4. Biometric Kiosk

Biometric Kiosk is an android based touch screen system. It permits staff to verify work schedules, review their time schedules and also can request time off. In some of the version, staff will be simply able to scan present job listings and different options.

Like different biometric devices, now employers don’t have to be compelled to fret about incidents of buddy punching or time theft. Fingerprint readers and different varieties of authentication will facilitate in eliminating misconduct associated with time and attendance.

5. Advanced Scheduling Modules

Scheduling also takes place through cloud based software. Advanced scheduling modules offer businesses larger visibility and flexibility in managing schedules of employees. Schedules are often digitally monitored on a weekly basis by employee group with pre-defined capability necessities per worker shift.

In addition to that, staff can clearly offer their availability to supervisors and will be able to receive email notifications based on changed shift schedules in real time; creating things easier in terms of coming up with plans and stick on to commitments in employee’s personal lives.

6. Mobile Time sheets

It is now completely a forgotten story of signing time sheets or manually entering the attendance. Mobile time sheets software which can be downloaded as an application to your tablet or other mobile devices; allows employees to access their time sheets online. Employers can use this information to process payroll, record-keeping and also the ability to closely track the employee attendance.

As we have now got an idea about new trends in time and attendance systems. Here are some reasons why you should be investing in a new time and attendance monitoring system:

1.Saves money
2.Reduction in errors
3.Improved accuracy
4.Saves time
5.Enforcing company policies and legal compliance
6.Easy management of working hours
7.Easy schedule and shift management
8.Quick and accurate reports

Final thoughts

The above mentioned are some of the awesome features that are making time and attendance monitoring system industry simple and integrated. As the process of time and attendance system is not easy, needs and requirements have to be well defined to be included on the software and also changes have to be integrated into the system for effective tracking of your employees’ time and attendance.

Make sure that you have software that can perfectly fulfil your organizational needs. If you are looking for a suitable time and attendance system, we can help you with that. Please share your thoughts with us.