Want to know how to balance your time at work? Want to please your workers so that they keep working hard? If the answer is a yes, then this post is all you need. In this article, you will learn a few cultural hacks that will make a happy workplace and encourage people to give their best. So without any further delay, let us get straight to it!
Creating a Happy Workplace Environment:
1. The power of chocolate:
Is there anything in the world that chocolate can’t do?
In case there is anything that it cant, we surely haven’t been able to discover that yet. Most researchers from the University of Warwick have stated that students and people can work better when candy is eaten and distributed among them. It can work for companies very well. No, we don’t mean that you have to buy a chocolate fountain. You could simply give away a couple of sweet treats around your office workers. Giving people chocolates will help them feel better and boost their spirits.
2. Get things moving:
It’s actually high time that you start thinking about the employees of your company and their wellness program. The healthy employees tend to be much happier, they come to work more often and also contribute towards your company more significantly. There are so many companies around the world that offer their people a few wellness programs and in that way, they also help others feel better.
3. Encourage them to get some exercise:
A third way to make your workplace a better and happier place is by encouraging people to exercise more. You can encourage a few wellness programs if you want or offer them to join free yoga classes two to three times a week. You may also encourage them to go on long walks with you after lunch or simply have meetings with them where you can talk about health and fitness. That will also work really well.
4. Get your pets to work:
A fourth thing you can do is bring the compony’s closest friend even closer to its people. Most researchers have stated that employees tend to get happier and less stressed when they see a dog or some puppies in their office. A study conducted in 2010 stated that dogs in the office help their employees much better. But how are pets helpful? Keep reading to find out!
5. How are pets helpful at work?:
Now, this is very simple! According to the Virginia Commonwealth School Of Business, bringing and having several animals to your workplace could make your work far more satisfying and easy. The pet lovers will always be much happy when they take these babies out for a little walk. It will help them combat stress and allow them to go back to work with a refreshed mind every day. Now isn’t that a great thing? To know more, read pets or no pets policy at work.
6. Give them some feedback:
You should always give your team members some feedback as they are always craving for it. This will boost their communication and help them feel better. Plus these practices are always helpful. When your employees feel like they are not being heard, they do not feel like people are respecting them. They will not feel very happy either. When something like that happens, they will begin to look for some greener pastures as well.
7. How can you work on the feedback?:
You can also improve your feedback by following some of these techniques. You can set up a meeting monthly where the team can meet up once in a while and come up with a few suggestions that are smart. You will be able to recognize when the company has come up with a good and properly suggested concept. In that way, the team can give some big contributions and the feedback does really matter to all of them.
8. Learn to give it back to them:
There are several employees who would want to work for such a company that they can feel proud of. This means they are being treated well for doing good. The company needs to see more people who are more responsible socially and can keep in touch with the community that is local. Do you know that good feeling after you have done something great for someone? That will be the sort of happiness using which you will be able to empower your team.
9. How can you do this?:
Very simple! You have to get out and meet people in your community who can help you make a new start. They will help you come up with new volunteers and you can even start a few groups so that they find help. No there is no need to do any sort of charity. You can just do good for your employers and they will automatically feel better. Employees who are happy will always be more productive.
10. Remember to thank them:
Your teammates have done enough for you so don’t forget to thank them. When you thank people, they always feel special about themselves. They feel good and want to work even more. If you could just congratulate a colleague of yours for doing a good job, you can also thank your client for landing that huge international project. In that way, everyone in your team will be happy and the work culture will always stay balanced.
11. Give them a salary hike:
If you want to make your workers happy, do something very simple! Give them a salary hike. You don’t have to boost it by double or something but at least increase it by a certain amount so that they feel happy about it. The bottom line is that if they feel happy about it, they will certainly do better and that is exactly what we want in our workplace, don’t we?
12. Send them on a vacation:
At times we just want our people to stay healthy and happy and to let that happen, you should organize vacations for them. No, you don’t have to spend too much money for this. Just plan a weekend getaway at a nearby resort and set a few goals for your people. Tell them that whoever does it better will have the opportunity to go away to a luxury resort for the weekend. If you do this once in every two months, people in your company will want to work harder and in that way, you will balance the culture at work.
Inspiring Ideas from 7 Companies With Fantastic Work Cultures:
Here are some other inspirations you can try from these seven companies.
1. Building ownership of employee by Huawei:
During its first few days, Huawei will provide its employees with a blanket with some mattress so that they could work late at night and then sleep inside the offices. Now, this shows the hard work and diligence that people have shown at workplaces. Not just that, a huge chunk of shares from the company was given to around 82,000 employees so that they could work and perform ever better. The practice not just helped them in building ownership of employees but also helped the organisation of the company become much more successful as they saw it on their own.
2. Making learning more fun from Hubspot:
Hubspot company always has this brilliant practise where the employee of the company is allowed to take the other employee out for a meal if they want so they can learn something fun. The best part from this is that all the expenses which are counted on this will be borne by the company itself. Not only will this become a smart and good idea but it will also encourage some of its employees so that they can learn and work from one another, bond with them and relax with their colleagues over a period of time.
3. Coffee bonding by Evernote:
In the company Evernote, there are several managers who have introduced a new coffee shop to their office. This helps the managers get in touch with the workers and spend more time chilling with them. The practice will also encourage the members of the team to drop by whenever they can, for a quick chat and can relax and even interact with a few members of the senior management group.
4. Vacation policy by Hubspot and Netflix:
The founder of Netflix likes to believe that giving freedom to its workers is a part of the culture and very much an essential responsibility. Therefore it is very important to let people take some time and go on a vacation. They don’t have to work during this time and simply enjoy themselves. People will come back so relaxed after this. Plus if you want, like Hubspot you could give them unlimited vacation days where people can enjoy themselves. You can put a condition in front of them that once they are back they have to work harder and finish work within a given period of time.
5. Facebook teaches to become more flexible:
Facebook always has a hack month in which a person is given the opportunity to pick some other team after it has worked with one. They can decide which one they would like to work with henceforth. When the month comes to an end, the employee can pick the kind of work they would like to do, what they will continue doing with them and in that way, they can become a part of a certain team. If they did not want to go back to the team they have worked with earlier, they can simply work with the ones they liked. This will certainly help in breaking away the monotony at work and help others to balance their time at work.
6. Using food for socialising:
LinkedIn is one company that can help you learn from. There are food trucks organized in San Francisco. They are very popular and well known that can really help you learn. Now if you guys didn’t know, food is a great way to help people enjoy, interact and even know each other better. Having free food once in a while will not only boost the mood of your employees but allow them to feel good at work. Apart from that, you can also organize a few games which they can partake in after grabbing lunch. The person who wins will also take away some very exciting prizes.
7. Boosting more creativity from Dropbox:
Every year when Dropbox celebrates its birthday, they come up with a hack week for some of its employees so that they are able to work on anything they want even when it comes to the event called Hack Week. The first few days when the employees are given work, they also have been given the opportunity to break away from it and try to build on some of the craziest ideas which they may be able to explore in the future.
Conclusion:
With this, the post comes to an end. If you have liked reading this, please leave us a comment below. We would love to know what you have thought about this. Plus if you are looking for someone who is in search of interesting ideas for their workplace, suggest this article. They will definitely find some help. Apart from that, if you have some questions regarding the post, let us know them as well. Always remember one thing! Cultural hacks are necessary for every workplace and these ones will definitely work if you give it a shot.
