Are you providing your staff with a 'family feel' at work?

Having the right workplace culture has increasingly been identified as a key to boosting staff performance, but looks like bosses are still not aware of what kind of culture their staff really want.

According to the latest Employee Outlook 2015 survey by the CIPD in partnership with Halogen Software, 55% of employees want a culture with a 'family feel, held together by loyalty and tradition'.

However, only a quarter (26%) of the 2,226 employees polled described their current organisation as providing them with such a culture.

To make things worse, almost 50% of the respondents described their organisation's culture as 'a formalised and structured place to work, where procedures govern what people do and hold people together'.

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This was mostly felt in the public sector (74%), followed by in large organisations with more than 250 employees (59%) and in the voluntary sector (43%).

"Culture is one of the few things that can define a business and if organisations can get it right, it will give them a competitive edge and a strong foundation for business growth," Jessica Cooper, research adviser at the CIPD, commented.

"This is a defining moment for businesses. After the uncertainty of the recession, we’ve now reached a point of stability which is seeing improved engagement from employees. However, far too many people are still sitting in the ‘neutral’ camp."

Indeed, the survey found that employee engagement was, in fact, at a 3-year high, rising steadily from 35% to 38% to 39% from 2013 to 2015.

While 59% of people considered their engagement to be neutral, only a handful (3%) of employees claimed to be disengaged, 1% less as compared to last year.

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