Creating an environment that your staff want to work in is an important part of getting maximum productivity and keeping a high retention rate. Much of people’s time will be spent at work, so it makes sense that they want to work somewhere that they are happy.
Happy employees produce a higher standard of work, they will pitch in when it comes to crunch time, and their productive hours will be higher too. A positive environment is just more fun too.
So here are a few ways that you can create a nurturing office culture, where staff want to come to work.
Positive Reinforcement
If your staff are putting in long hours, working weekends, or totally killed it at a pitch – don’t let that go unnoticed. It is also wise not to act like that is the standard you expect. Positive reinforcement is something that should be used as often as possible. If you appreciate the work or the client offers good feedback, then you should also pass that on.
Your team is more likely to keep performing at a high standard when you show that you appreciate the effort.
Training
Not only is this great for your business, but it is great for the individuals too. People like to have goals and achievements, and as a business, you have goals and one of those is growth.
When you provide the right training opportunities, you are upskilling your team. A more highly skilled team can take on larger projects. And some of the team members will eventually go on to lead.
Leadership development is something that should be an ongoing process. Ensuring that you choose the right people, and let them tackle the learning in a way that matches their working life is important.
There are countless opportunities for your team to attend seminars, talks and networking days too. These can be a valuable source of ideas, theories and training too.
Conversation
While you need to keep a level of professionalism and your own leadership position intact, your staff should feel like they can approach you. This might be to discuss issues that they are having outside of work that will have an impact, or that a project isn’t going to plan. This will give your staff the confidence that should something happen they will be treated fairly and that they can talk to someone about things.
Be Nice
This one is very simple. But it really starts with the people at the top. If you ensure that you are saying Good Morning, or Hello to people as you pass, your staff are more likely to carry that on. Greetings are a small but friendly gesture that will have the whole office saying hi or bye. This makes the office a much more welcoming environment.
The acknowledgement is a key part of people feeling ‘at home’ while at work.
Social
Having a range of social activities for your staff once a month will encourage people to get to know each other better. When that happens if there are issues with a project in work or personal life, the team will work together to fix it. Social interactions and having confidence in your co-workers to have you back will play a big part in how long people will stay at one company.
Open Environment
Imagine you have a few different teams. And on Monday you will be in a marketing meeting. And you choose to close the door. But someone from the design team has a brilliant idea – that you are never going to hear because you keep a closed environment. You can never tell when and where a good idea will come from. So if you keep an open-door policy on regular meetings and updates, you might find that the collaboration gives a new lease of life to your projects.
There should be no doors that keep out good ideas from great people.
Collective Goal
While the business will have a clearly defined goal, there should be other ones that the whole team are working towards. A sales goal for the year, winning certain awards or creating case studies that will change how things are done.
For collective goals to work, they need to be open for everyone to see and contribute to in whatever way they can. Regular updates and open feedback channels are essential here too.
Flexible Working
Your employees all need to do a set amount of tasks. Some are highly intellectually challenging, others may be creative, and some require deep thinking and focus. The office environment is where 80% of that work will take place. But if you give staff the opportunity to work from home, or you have an area in the office that can provide a change of scenery you will see an increase in their productivity.
The location in which someone is working has a direct impact on their brains. The smell of bread makes you want to eat it; music and imagery spark ideas of a creative nature, and so on.
Allowing staff to work somewhere else every once in a while will change their viewpoint on certain parts of what they are doing. And the outcome will be different.
In general productivity of workers goes up when there are flexible working options.
Whole Team Collab
Getting a range of perspectives on one topic can give you more to work with. Each team will come at a problem in a slightly different way, and all of the fresh perspectives might be the breakthrough that you need. The best way to have a collaborative office is to send invites for all brainstorming sessions with an outline on the goal. This way, people who have something to contribute will show up. Have the documents open for people to add ideas and notes as they wish. And encourage a cross over of skills at all times.
Making your employees feel like they matter and that they want to contribute will mean that all of the work produced is of a high standard, and they are interested in furthering their own skills.
Happy staff are more likely to take on the business vision as their own too. If you are unsure of which course of action to take, then start with the whole team collab and come up with an action plan to get the ball rolling.
