How to create a happy workplace culture?
Create a Happy Workplace Culture
Happiness is a relative term — what can make one person happy can probably thrillingly elate another person while receiving indifferent flakes from another. This is human psychology. When it is about the workplace culture, the objective obviously should be at the overall impact, rather than the individual level. The objective clearly should be to make the workplace more proactive, energetic and bubbling with enthusiasm. This kind of a work environment can be realized and fulfilled when employees come to the place filled with positivity and passion to give their best.
These are people who are motivated, who look forward to coming to the office every day and perform their optimal. These are the people that organizations should look at hiring and developing. These are the people who are examples of employee engagement, satisfaction and happiness.
Happy and motivated work culture — is it the same?
Not having too many responsibilities and things to do at work can make an employee happy and he can immediately co-relate the work environment to be happy, per se. This is the negative aspect of happiness where most of the team members may be under-utilized and have nothing much to do vis-à-vis few employees who are entrusted with major work. While this environment can be happy for people who love to sit back and get their salaries at the end of the month, it is definitely not a motivating or satisfying environment and the employees will soon realize this and would start to look for opportunities to move away.
The motivated environment is what organizations must aim at achieving for once the atmosphere is charged up, it will automatically create a positively happy work culture where employees work and perform not only for their personal satisfaction and gains but for the success and attainment of organisational goals and objectives.
Also See: What are good ways to increase employee engagement?
Creating the desired happy and motivated work culture
One of the key elements of a positive work environment is the level of employee engagement. If employees are happy doing their work and happy to take in more responsibilities and duties, are enthralled at the prospect of going to the office — it means they are highly engaged with their organisation and their work.
The fact is that when organizations have employees with higher levels of engagement, the motivation levels to give their hundred per cent is also equally high and this results in 21% more profitability than having averagely engaged employees. This is a big reason why organizations of all nature — big or small, domestic or international — should focus on developing the desired level of employee engagement and happy work culture for its workers.
Also Read: How to improve employee engagement within your organization?
Source: Medium
This is how organizations can lay the foundation to a great corporate culture: -
- Start with the basics
As we move up to climb the higher steps of our career ladder, we often forget the basics of human relations and social skills. Communication is so very important to keep not only yourself grounded but also to interact with others. Greeting your co-colleagues, the team member is an elementary thing that many bosses forget to do. In doing so, they appear to be cold, arrogant and bossy whereas a happy coworking environment requires everyone to be warm and well-mannered.
Leaders and managers should not forget to be their best self in front of their teams and be the same as everyone. A pat on the back, a warm nudge, a simple Good morning to each and everyone around only shows your empathetic nature and it will do a lot of good to making the work culture nice and warm.
2. Appreciate often
No leader is a leader without a team. And if the team gives you whole-hearted support you wouldn’t want more to achieve your targets. It is good to highlight the good work done by people. Waiting to tell people that they have done good and you are proud of their work for the performance appraisal day is a bad idea. It will only demotivate and disengage team members.
Leaders need to be prompt in recognizing quality work and appreciate the ones who have done the same, amidst the entire organisation. Doing this will elevate the employee engagements rates to sky-rocketing levels.
3. Understand the personal development needs of your team and act
Every individual needs to boost his self-esteem and morale. That is the way to live and work. As a team leader, you should be able to comprehend the strengths and weaknesses of your team members and accordingly assign them to different team-building activities. Very often these activities are organized by the HR department generically for every employee and sometimes there are specific training organized to meet exclusive needs and requirements of teams and departments.
As a leader, you should be able to handhold your team members to equip them with soft and hard skills, as per their interest, talent and capabilities. Some great team building activities are the Gigsaw Puzzle and the Pyramid Building Activity.
4. Make people accountable
Leaders often feel that giving up key responsibilities will take the limelight away from them. That is not the case. In order to facilitate your team members to grow and move forward and to enhance employee engagement, it is advisable to make each member responsible, accountable and answerable for their tasks and work. Leaders need to assign work in a way that everyone feels wanted and important.
5. Invest in meaningful and engaging corporate off-sites
Offsites usually, see employees packing their bags and flying away to a different city or location. The bright side of corporate off-sites is that these provide an informal atmosphere for the employees to interact and gel with each other. The designations and seniority levels cease to exist once the group moves out of the office confines. Thus off-sites enable people to know more about each other, strike amicable chords and friendship with one another.
All this makes the working environment lighter and less competitive. At corporate off-sites, most organizations have different types of team building activities organized to drill some key learnings and skills to the team members too. Thus, the offsite becomes an ideal ground for setting up and enhancing a happy and collaborative work culture.
