Making a workplace more enjoyable for employees is a win-win situation for everyone. Employers reach their financial goals, employees feel engaged by their work, and customers prefer to buy their products or use the services of companies where they are greeted with a smile and treated with warmth and good cheer.
Rather than worrying about how well your company is going to do and forgetting about making it a place where people enjoy working for you, it makes perfect business sense to take steps to make your organization a happy place. So, how do you design that type of environment? How do you encourage creativity in the workplace by improving the general mood level?
Here are four ways to get started:
- A Well-Stocked Breakroom
A quick and simple way to immediately make a difference in the workplace in terms of encouraging focus, productivity, and happiness is to upgrade your office vending services. Choose vending machines that offer healthy snack options and the latest in reliable technology.
Many people are becoming aware of the benefits of making healthier food choices and will be delighted to discover that they can get beverages, teas, juices, and snacks from both favorite local sources and brand-name providers.
- Good Management
When faced with common business challenges and unexpected setbacks, managers have two choices to correct the situation: they can either focus on the positive or get caught up in the undertow of the negative. While the default approach to any type of business problem is to debrief everyone involved on what went wrong, what didn’t work, and how to minimize the damage, try turning that around. One thing that good managers understand is that every situation is open to interpretation.
Focusing on the positive is not necessarily a naive Pollyanna approach; it doesn’t mean that you should ignore the mistakes made or the fact that some things need be improved, it just means that you should also notice what did go well and to strive to amplify it, too. Ultimately, when you look for the good, you find it; and, when you look for the bad, you find that too. In short, you reinforce more of what you notice.
- Fun and Innovative Perks
Another way to improve employee satisfaction and raise engagement levels across the workforce is to research fun and innovative perks. In fact, there is a whole theory and plenty of studies on what types of perks make people happy.
You won’t be surprised to learn that many billion-dollar technology companies have innovated some of the most ingenious perks. According to Business Insider, Google offers its engineers 15 days paid time off in their first year, 20 days after 3 years, and 25 days after 5 years.
- Telecommuting
One popular work arrangement when it comes to improving workplace flexibility is to allow employees to do their work outside the office. They are free to work from home or places near their home, like their favorite coffee shops or at their local public library. In short, pretty much anyplace where they can get a good Wi-Fi connection to be able to work remotely. This telecommunication link enables them to stay in touch with their employer and coworkers to facilitate workflow.
This flexible arrangement works for everyone. It reduces employer’s office-related energy bill and it allows employees to skip a long commute and to work at their own pace without feeling micromanaged. Employees, of course, still visit the office for meetings and to touch base with employers about what is happening in the company.
Happiness & Productivity
Although the correlation between happiness and productivity has been verified in numerous scientific studies by psychologists and sociologists, it’s rare to find it commonly adopted as a practical business philosophy. This is not because the research has been hidden in abstruse scientific literature. Eminent researchers like Martin Seligman and Shawn Achor have written popular books about it. Martin Seligman revealed his findings in Authentic Happiness and Shawn Achor discussed his research-based ideas in The Happiness Advantage.
It takes some clear thinking and realistic expectations to create a happy workplace, but you can be the one who starts it in your niche. Once you take a few constructive steps to initiate a positive workplace environment, the positve feelings will spread without any further effort on your part. In the long run, implementing corporate policies and encouraging business processes that will create a happy workplace will turn out to be a sound business investment.
