How to Ensure Every Day is a Good Day For Your Employees
Do your employees slump through the door every morning in the depths of despair? Or maybe they come in looking okay, but by the time 2 p.m. hits, they're sporting vacant stares and have clearly checked out? Either way, you’re looking at a workforce that needs to be inspired. While not every moment of every day can be stimulating and fascinating, making an effort to create good days for your employees is something you have the power to script. Here are just some of the ways you can energize the workday:
Foster Creativity
Allowing your staff to be creative is a great way to make sure they enjoy the time spent in the office. Mundane tasks are necessary, but they do not have to rule the entire job. There are always opportunities to dose even the most repetitive tasks with a shot of creativity. Let your assistant plan a party. Give your sales reps a contest (with a prize) to come up with the most innovative sales pitch. Ask your accountant to solve a brain-busting riddle every morning, just to get the juices flowing. Fostering creativity will take some creativity on your own part, but you might find that it energizes your workday just as much as it does for your employees.
Show Appreciation
A little appreciation can go a long way when it comes to brightening someone’s day. Anything from a simple “nice job” to an appreciation ceremony will help your employee feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And of course, the more valued they feel, the more likely they are to want to excel—a win-win for everyone. It can be easy to forget about giving praise and showing gratitude for a job well done, especially if your workers don’t seem to be the types that need positive reinforcement. But in the end, there is no denying that everyone appreciates being appreciated.
Turn Negatives into Positives
Bad things are going to happen at work. Mean things are going to be said that can’t be taken back, deals are going to fall through, and orders are going to arrive late. While you can’t always avoid hard times, you can do your best to give them a positive spin. If you let bad feelings fester, you’re going to end up working in a hornet’s nest of negativity. Production will slow down, and people will begin to dread coming to work every day. But if you make a concerted effort to turn negatives into positives, your staff will go back to being as busy as bees (and as happy as clams) in no time.
Build Feelings of Community
It’s hard to have a bad day when you’re surrounded by friends. Some managers don’t want their employees to build friendships because they think it will distract them from getting their work done. But in reality, the opposite is true. When people feel like their workplace is a tight-knit community full of respect and support, they're going to be much happier than they would be in an environment full of strangers, or worse, enemies. And it’s no secret that happy employees are productive employees.
Make Work Fun
Work and fun may sound like they're technically opposite terms, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Innovative leaders like Zappos’ Tony Hsieh have proven that an enjoyable working environment inspires creativity, loyalty, innovation, and a heck of a lot of other benefits. You don’t have to go so far as to host pajama parties or three-day festivals. But you can surprise your employees with donuts in the morning or a pizza party in the afternoon. You can have theme days or casual Tuesdays. You can play fun team-building games, you can have contests with prizes, you can even host after-hours get-togethers. Doing just a little something every day to create a more pleasant atmosphere can make a huge difference in employee morale.
Reward and Award
If you’ve ever seen the American version of the hit TV show The Office, you're probably familiar with the Dundie Awards. Every year, office manager Michael Scott would take his employees to dinner and host an Oscar-like ceremony in which he gave out trophies with titles like the Fine Work Award and the Whitest Sneakers Award. Sure, it was just a TV show, and he was a hilariously (and often appallingly) bumbling boss, but the fact is, people like to be rewarded and awarded. Giving out silly, encouraging awards that show your team you know and appreciate them is actually a great way to keep a fun, creative atmosphere alive while giving your staff well-deserved kudos at the same time.
Smile (a lot!)
It’s been said that smiling is contagious. So what better way to brighten your employees’ days than to flash them a genuine, supportive smile? A smile from the boss can mean a lot, and it's likely it will cause a chain reaction where your staff members start smiling at each other. Before you know it, the office will be alive with happy faces that put emojis to shame.
No one expects their employees to come into work dancing and singing with sparkles in their eyes and bluebirds on their shoulders. But everyone benefits from having a good work day. Taking just a little bit of time to make that happen will not only generate great rewards for your workers, but for you and your company as well.