When a company is going through financial hardships (like the ones caused by a global pandemic) often the first budgets to be cut are those for training, development, and communications. This may appear like an easy call, but in fact, these items should be moved to the top of the priority list. Employees are the backbone of any organization, and great damage can be done to a workplace’s culture if leadership sends the message that employees are expendable and their development is unimportant. And this isn’t just a notion—hard data backs up this fact. According to Jobvite’s 2020 Job Seeker Nation Report, 52 percent of employees said company value and culture were their top influences in accepting a job during the pandemic. Worth noting, this is just behind compensation. Additionally, 81 percent of workers think a company’s culture is somewhat to very important in their decision to apply for a job, and 35 percent of workers who have left their jobs in the first 90 days said culture was one of the reasons. Successful companies do not cut the budgets that support employee engagement when times get tough. Instead, they lean into the challenges by prioritizing the well-being of their people.
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