Every employer should promote a fun work environment for their employees because it makes people more productive as they enjoy coming to work. Even if you’ve taken the first steps to create a productive environment, there’s much more you can do.
You can organize team-building activities and trips, work on celebrating success with your employees, you can listen to your employees’ needs, organize competitions, organize the workplace, do something with the exterior, and enjoy hobbies.
1. Celebrate Success
Moulding your company culture to celebrate success, including all kinds of victories, can boost employee morale. It also makes work extremely enjoyable for your employees. Another thing to keep in mind is that everybody makes mistakes, so don’t be too harsh on employees that mess up at some point.
However, this doesn’t mean that you need to be too lenient either. Find a good balance and make sure that every victory becomes a cause for celebration. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, just compliment all the employees on their hard work, and you’ll see them enjoy it.
2. Your Employees’ Needs
It’s not uncommon to survey your employees to figure out what they would like to do or have around the workplace. With an anonymous survey, you’ll understand your employees’ needs better, and you can act on them.
You can make surveys about the company enjoyable for your employees if you make them anonymous and include multiple open-ended questions. Don’t ask about satisfaction. Just ask for their opinion.
This way, they get a chance to influence the workplace environment indirectly, and you can make it more individualized for all the employees.
3. Organize Competitions
Encouraging a competitive spirit among your employees can do wonders for your work environment, and it can make work extremely fun for most. Apart from making their workplace more enjoyable, they also build team spirit. Try something like:
- Trivia: Make sure that you organize the competition, so there are teams with equal numbers of members. Most people like trivia, so this will make a good impact on your employees’ perception of their work environment.
- Costume contests: Celebrating Halloween at the workplace is a huge plus when it comes to a fun work environment. If you’re working remotely, you can still do it. Make a contest in which the three best costumes win three different prizes.
- Art contests: Organizing art contests can be a good idea for the workplace, it’s fun, and some people get to express their talents while others show appreciation. You’ll get to know the fun side of your employees.
- Gaming tournaments: Depending on the type of collective at the workplace, you can organize game tournaments on some of the popular gaming consoles. Discuss with your employees which console is best for them.
4. Organizing the Workplace
It’s always good for all the employees to be part of refurbishing or renovating the workplace. They don’t have to do anything physically. It’s just good to have their ideas acknowledged and to show that you did some decoration of the workplace based on those ideas. Also, you can ask the employees if they’d like to take part in the workplace’s decoration.
5. Make the Exterior Enjoyable
You can have a marvellous workplace on the inside, so your employees will be happy when they come to work, but you should also think about making the exterior of your work environment enjoyable.
Having a part of your office building’s exterior turned into an area where employees can spend quality time together and have fun during work hours can give their productivity an enormous boost. You can organize some landscaping to make an oasis outside.
Imagine having a swimming pool for your employees, or just imagine that you had a swimming pool in your first workplace. It’s just a matter of employing some swimming pool builders, and thinking about the decoration.
6. Everybody Needs a Hobby
Employees can share their hobbies at the workplace, and they can enjoy extracurricular activities together. Plus, sharing hobbies among employees gives you the basis to include those hobbies on every workday if the hobby isn’t scuba diving.
For example, playing chess, doing Yoga or other exercises, or singing and dancing. All these can become a part of the workplace, and you can encourage your employees to take part in competitions outside of work.
Author bio:
Alison Pearson is an interior design student. She is a writer and designer, and her ultimate passion is art and architecture. She is also a bibliophile and her favourite book is “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner. Follow her on Twitter.