As mentioned above, sharing your story can have a great impact on how you attract clients, investors and talent. It can also help you retain good employees in a way that does not cost you a lot of money but instead focuses on creating a strong community at work, something that is particularly important to millennials. Read on to learn about four key ways storytelling can help you do that.

Increase newcomers’ commitment

Having a good company story to tell does not just attract good applicants, but can also help you keep them in the company longer. Once new employees start working with you, it is important that they immediately learn more details about your story and values, how they are lived in your business each day and who you are as a company. If you have some great examples to share, newcomers will be more likely to want to become part of something they feel is bigger than them, form an alliance with their new team and go the extra mile on the job.

Adapt your stories to the audience

Telling any story of your company’s history, purpose and success will increase your staff’s engagement. However, if you can give them something they can personally relate to, the effect will be even better. If you are welcoming new staff to the team, of course it will be inspiring for them to hear about the achievements of senior management or founding partners. It will show them that theirs is a company with great leadership they can trust and look up to. But why not share anecdotes about how employees in similar positions as their own made a difference? This will give them something to identify with personally and encourage them to make their own positive mark on the team.

Positivity is the key

As with everything else, positivity is much more inspiring than negativity. If you share great stories of staff that have performed well, had great ideas or surpassed goals, newcomers will want to mimic this behavior and achieve similar or even better results. Cautionary tales or stories about what has gone wrong in the past should not be the focus. The only thing you will achieve with them is that new staff will lose trust in your company and not integrate into the team properly.

Encourage staff to share

Everybody has their own way of approaching tasks and problems. By getting both seasoned and new staff to share their unique ways of working, you give everybody the chance to make a meaningful contribution. This gives employees a sense of purpose and achievement that goes beyond just ticking tasks of their to-do list. By letting teams share individual stories among each other, you will create a strong community in your business whose supportive, positive working environment will be sure to keep your best talent on board. Especially millennials are known to value this kind of approach very highly and will prove loyal to you if they find your company is a place they can express themselves and be valued for it.