According to a recent BetterUp study, we are facing a connection crisis. Employees want more connections at work, and 43% of the employees surveyed believe their companies aren’t doing enough to make them feel connected to their colleagues.

Ultimately, a loss of connection to our companies can drive us to walk out. Those who felt this way quit their jobs 39% more often. Because without a strong sense of community, your employees won’t feel like they belong. And they’re less likely to stick around.

At the end of the day, people and relationships are what make employees stay. In a competitive labor market, increased turnover is the last thing you want as an organization. Here are the three things that leaders must focus on to help build a connection for their teams.

1. CREATE A STRONG ONBOARDING EXPERIENCE

According to one 2022 study, a great onboarding experience for new hires can improve employee retention by 82%. And yet Gallup reported that only 12% of employees found their companies did a great job onboarding them. A strong onboarding experience can be a solid foundation for building a community.

That’s why when you welcome new hires, you should consider spending more time curating social interactions and breakouts rather than making it about the education of policies and signing up for healthcare benefits. Yes, those are important, but you must ensure that you supplement it with interactive and engaging activities. At Carta, we provide new hires with access to all of our programming throughout the year so they can keep building connections and cultivating relationships.

It’s critical that the onboarding process allows you to create a strong cohort of new hires who keep in touch through company-facilitated touch points throughout the year. Individuals in the cohort can also lean on each other for support and guidance and build friendships over time.

2. PRIORITIZE CROSS-FUNCTIONAL INITIATIVES

It’s also essential to help your team prioritize participation in cross-functional initiatives. This could be joining a company-wide task force to find cost savings, helping to host an employee resource group event, or working on an initiative to explore launching a new product. Meeting new people and continuing to build relationships with coworkers through work projects is a critical way to create new connections.

In an effort to be efficient and productive, many of us are focused on working on discrete tasks by ourselves. As we continue to adjust to our new ways of working, we must prioritize and sometimes even force collaboration in a world where some are in the office and some are working remotely. Make it part of your team’s goals to work on cross-functional initiatives, so they are motivated and incentivized to work on different projects across the organization.

Along the way, they’ll engage (and hopefully build relationships) with more people.

3. MAKE SPACE FOR CONNECTIONS

Gone are the days of spontaneous interactions by the kitchen pantry and bumping into each other in the hallway. Leaders of remote or hybrid companies are now responsible for creating space for connections. This could mean giving employees access to office space calendars, so they can coordinate teams working in the space “live” together when they are in the office. Or it could mean offering breakfast or lunch when employees come into the office so that they can meet people they don’t know and bond over a meal.

At Carta, we had started “a donut challenge” where you could be paired randomly with a colleague to help facilitate 1:1 new introductions. Remember that as leaders, we need to encourage the time and space for just getting to know each other. We shouldn’t punish individuals for not being productive or efficient 100% of the time.

Read the full report here