In a world where enthusiasm is often looked upon with suspicion, it is easy to create an atmosphere in which everyone is “working for the weekend,” and few are excited about the company or product. However, a positive attitude and genuine passion for the job ahead can boost productivity and increase job satisfaction – improving employee retention overall. A positive work environment also engenders collaboration, inspires creativity, and builds a supportive network for employees and team leads.
Fostering positivity in the workplace will help your business and your employees thrive.
Defining Your Positive Work Environment
So, you’ve looked at your company or team and decided that more positivity could be beneficial. What does that mean for your business?
Here are a few things to consider as you work toward the ideal workplace:
– Are employees and team leads encouraged to support each other?
– Do your employees own their actions – good or bad?
– What is the process when someone makes a mistake? Is punishment involved or is there a correction process which enables the employee to remedy the mistake and prevent future errors?
– Do employees feel inspired?
– How is the work your company does meaningful? Could you make it more so?
– Do your staff trust each other?
– Are your employees collegial and respectful to one another?
– How much gossip happens in your business?
Answering the above questions can help you discover how your business stacks up against the ideal work environment you are hoping to build.
Five Strategies for Fostering Positivity in the Office
Happy, positive, and passionate employees are often the most productive employees. That’s why we are providing five strategies you can use to foster a more positive work environment.
- Focus on how your business helps others.
Providing meaning in the workplace can make the difference between a “clock in/clock out” existence and one in which an employee is happy to be at work. So, now is the time to consider, how does your business help others? It could be that you provide a vital service to your community or maybe you make your customer’s day a little bit better.
Here at Business Success Consulting Group, we actively help businesses grow and become more profitable – helping our community to stay employed, supporting entrepreneurs, and bolstering economic growth. That’s what keeps us leaping out of bed in the morning. So, what wonderful action does your business do?
- Give credit where credit is due.
It is all too easy to only correct things an employee has done wrong and to fail to recognize everything he or she has done right. While correction is an important part of any job, be sure to take time out of your day to communicate to your employees what they have done right and to commend them when they have done an outstanding job. By focusing on positives, your staff will be motivated to do better work overall. We wrote a whole article on this subject which you can find right here.
- Provide training to employees – and correction if they make a mistake.
Giving employees the tools they need to do their jobs effectively can only benefit your business. Setting up training processes, and a system for resolving any mistakes made can help employees work better, more efficiently, and both admit to and fix their mistakes rapidly.
- Set up processes that encourage everyday collaboration.
It can be hard to create a collaborative environment, but setting up systems in which collaboration is a regular part of the workday can make this process feel natural to employees. Technological collaboration tools like Slack, Asana, and Igloo all can provide a “plug and play” collaborative environment. Other ways to encourage collaboration include setting up regular meetings, asking employees to mentor each other, create teams with excellent communicators as their leads, and ask employees how they would like to collaborate.
- Cut out gossip.
Sniping and backstabbing have no place in a positive environment. Instead of some news getting onto the office rumor mill, set up the reporting policy that works best for your company environment.
Finally, use this resource to help you motivate and inspire your team moving forward. As you work to create a positive work environment, don’t hesitate to contact Business Success Consulting Group. We are here to help boost your employee productivity – and positivity.