A positive work environment is crucial to retain talents. Setting your team up for success comes from physical, emotional, and intellectual ways to support them. The simplest way to keep your employees is to make them feel like valuable members of the company.
Here we compiled 5 ways to create positive work environments and set your team up for success!
1. Conduct regular check-ins
Not surprisingly, people who like to come to work perform better at work. According to a recent survey, 39% of Americans say they feel happy at the office when employers do regular check-ins. Stop by your colleague’s or employee’s desk and ask for their opinions on projects or even how their weekends were. A little warmth to make them feel cared for goes a long way!
2. Facilitate learning opportunities
To make the entire team more productive, companies should focus more on the long-term productivity than the short-term. When employees have all the knowledge and information to do their work, productivity increases. Moreover, an environment that facilitates learning opportunities also encourages professional growth. When various learning opportunities are provided, employees contribute back to the company.
Learning opportunities also include onboarding and training. Ineffective onboarding is a major reason for new hires to quit within the first 3 months, according to a BambooHR survey. Conveying companies’ mission and value to employees can strengthen their trust and will to work for something they believe in. Make sure to include the company’s mission, beliefs, and values during the onboarding weeks.
3. Encourage a healthy work-life balance
When employees fulfill their basic needs and responsibilities outside of the workplace, such as family, friends, and self-development, they are more focused at work. Moreover, experiences outside of the workplace often contribute to employees’ work ethic and creativity in solving challenges. Companies can hold a monthly seminar on mental health or weekly meditation session. These can help relieve stress from work and advocate for mindfulness at the workplace. With such practices, companies create a culture of prioritizing mental health and normalizing taking breaks between work.
4. Appreciate hard work
An annual reward is a great way to show gratitude for hard workers in the office. Such positive reinforcement can prompt similar behaviors in the future and motivate other people to work harder for a reward the following year.
Recognition doesn’t always have to come from rewards, though. Simple praise and verbal recognition at the team’s weekly meeting can make people feel seen. This culture of recognizing each other’s work verbally and physically can push employees to go the extra mile.
5. Build team spirit
People seek a community and appreciate being part of something bigger. Building team spirit creates unity in the workplace, and employees are more likely to work together as a team and feel more purposeful. To build team spirit, management can establish some exclusive fun traditions, such as afternoon tea once in a while, vision board sharing, or big holiday celebrations. Some popular ones include Christmas Secret Santas or even running in an annual race together to show appreciation.
