Employee engagement is one of the most important indicators of work satisfaction. Organizations are seeking ways to enhance their company culture while also developing professional and personal skills for their employees. That’s not an easy task for HR professionals or leaders of any organization, but there’s one way to achieve both.

Has your organization hosted a company-wide or team-led employee book club? If not, you may be missing out on some major benefits for your teams. Here are five important ways an employee book club can support your organization:

1. Enhance company culture. Bringing employees of all levels together in a shared experience to openly engage in free-flowing discussion contributes to a strong culture. Titles selected can also reflect and support your organization’s unique mission and values. Consider allowing employees to select the titles they’re most interested in, whether it’s a recreational fiction read or a professional development title.

2. Strengthen teams. Regularly bringing employees together to meet outside of project-specific work allows cross-functional relationships to develop and grow organically. Book clubs can be company-wide. Consider encouraging leaders throughout the company to have team-specific reads, allowing for more focused subject areas like sales, technology, marketing, and more.

3. Develop employees. Books that align with your organization’s business strategy or hard skills paired with the right discussion can help enhance employees’ professional and technical skills. Post-book-club insights can be implemented into day-to-day work or current projects.

4. Encourage diverse perspectives. Open discussion allows employees to discover more of what they have in common, but also how they may perceive something differently. It enables your employees to better understand why someone may have a different viewpoint and learn more about the background that may have shaped it.

5. Foster innovation and creativity. Sharing and exchanging insights, ideas, and opinions about the books can foster out-of-the-box thinking and even inspire new approaches to professional projects and goals. Your organization may even learn more about what’s important to their teams, sparking new ideas for employee engagement initiatives or crucial changes.

Your book club can be as robust or simple as your organization has the time and resources for. From a single company-wide quarterly read to monthly breakout book clubs among your employee resource groups, there’s endless opportunity to create a plan that suits your needs.

Need books for your employee book club? Contact [email protected] to learn about bringing an OverDrive professional digital library to your organization.