One needs happy and productive employees to establish a workplace and grow. The key to keeping the employees contented is to have a great workplace.
To make your office a better place, all kinds of change will be required from physical to modifications in the company culture and administration methods.
This will transform an office from a place to only put in some hours and obtain income into a place that employees love setting off for from their home.
Just a slight change can take your office up a notch. Below points will help in knowing the changes to make your office a better place to work.
25 Ways to Make Your Company Great Place to Work:
1. Hiring the right employees:
It is important to understand that the kind of people you will employ will be the ones to contribute to making the office a better place. And hence you must employ people who are professional, work well in a team and who can be a factor of the positive work environment. One poor candidate can spoil the entire structure of the system, thus choose wisely.
2. Get rid of toxic employees:
Someone’s bad attitude can affect all people’s daily performance. It is a tough thing to get rid of toxic employees but this helps other employees and even has a good impact on the clients or customers of the company.
3. Maintain a clean and well-embellished office:
A clean and attractive workplace will affect remarkably on the interactions between the members of the office. You should make an effort to have a comfortable environment, by having comfy furniture, work equipment, and some top-notch facilities.
Perhaps it may seem less cost-effective now, but when the employees observe that you care about them and invest in their well being, you will find instinctive attitude change.
4. Ensure your office is well lit:
It is crucial to ensure that your staff is working in a room with natural light. With poor lighting, there can be significant troubles such as eye strain, headaches, blurred visions, all of which are unfavorable for a productive work environment.
A well-lit office will help the employees to feel energized all through the day. In case there is no option for natural light in your office, then try using the light fixtures with modifiable filters.
5. Do have a relaxation area:
Provide a separate room for employees to unwind. Every employee needs breaks and requires some sort of social interaction. Giving them a room to unwind without disturbing the other employees at work will help in raising morale exceptionally.
6. Have a couch:
Couches provide a casual look to the office and help for relaxation. The employees can sit on the couch and have interactions. This can be incorporated in the relaxation area.
7. Have a dry-erase board wall:
Put up a dry erase board on the office wall. It is very constructive as it encourages instant brainstorming. It is a great visual of your office staff’s work. Employees can take snaps of the board on their phones to revive their memory on a course of action of the office. This keeps the enthusiasm going and keeps priorities upfront.
8. Allow your employees to be comfortable:
Allow the employees to choose their desks and chair and let them purchase and get things like exercise balls and plants from the company’s resources. Trust them to manage their own time and keep them free to take breaks to play games and refresh as necessary.
9. Encourage customization:
Provide each employee space and liberty to personalize their cubicle or area to their preference of a workspace. Instead of having the same kind of setting issued every time, allow others to customize their setup by giving them a budget.
10. Encourage collaboration:
Regardless of whether your office concept is of cabins or cubicles, ensure that you have an adequate space where employees can collaborate. This will generate team creativity and productivity with comradeship.
11. Have meals together:
An effective way to improve employee relations with each other is by arranging meals together. There is no need for spending a lot of money to do this. A simple pizza or sandwich meal will suffice. Do a demonstration and then leave the employees to chat and delve into one another.
12. Arrange fun activities:
Ask the employees to suggest certain activities and accordingly plan an event each month to bond as a firm. The events can include monthly birthday parties with ice cream, sports day, family or open house day, etc.
The events can be held during the work hours to break the whole week of the ordeal. You must show gratitude towards the employees for their hard work as you improve the company’s culture.
13. Employee-celebrating decoration:
When you hold events like sketching or crafting for employees or their family, allow their creations to be hanged or placed around the office, as appreciation. It will indicate that your office is all about the people who work within it.
14. Allow the employees to move around:
Never let your employees feel as if they are shackled to their respective desks. Sitting at a desk for hours does not suggest that they are being productive or doing their best with ideas.
Allow them to move around, walk to a nearby coffee shop, be outside the workplace for an hour or depart from work soon to work from a café or bar. When a person has the liberty to move, they tend to have better thinking and come across fresh ideas.
15. Crackdown on wellness:
To have a successful workplace, emphasize wellness. You can hold events promoting meditation or yoga and asking the employees to participate in it or hold events for the employee’s kids or arrange pet events for their pet animals, all of which can be a tremendous stress killer.
This way you encourage happiness and a light-hearted attitude amongst the employees, which also helps in their productivity and well being.
16. Arrange a face-to-face meeting with employees:
We are living in a world of technology and we forget the significance of face to face meetings with employees. The employees must meet you and you must ask for their feedback regularly. Emails can be impersonal and lead to miscommunication.
17. Communicate instructions differently:
To generate a sense of following the shared mission, while providing direction to your staff you have to replace ‘you must’ to ‘let us’, reporting to you or your colleague. It can help you in strategic big plans or even in small projects.
With this mindset, you can then break the goal down to small tasks and communicate it clearly to its responsible employee. You will help the employee to feel like a crucial part of the mission and find a more engaged staff.
18. Avoid giving overburden to employees:
The majority of the people quit their job as they are demanded to take up the work of two or more people by the management. You need to be vigilant in not handling the employees more work than what they can cope with. If there is a situation of excessive pending work that needs to be completed, you can outsource employees to complete the same.
19. Practice flexibility:
You should allow trusted and hardworking employees to schedule their day as they want. Unless there is a significant meeting, permit them to schedule a doctor’s appointment for mid-day or some more personal appointment like for a haircut. Be flexible to grant them leave and mid-day time off.
20. Practice transparency:
Every employer must operate openly and honestly. Be it for promotions of the employee or awaiting modifications in the business, be transparent about everything. Let your employees react about information as it is imparted. It will prevent misunderstandings and rumors to rise from not being transparent and honest about business affairs.
21. Encourage proper training:
Many employees wish to perform well at work. Provide them the proper resources they require and you will see them succeed. This implies that you are letting employees be accountable for their respective work and creating opportunities for them to advance their skills by training and making themselves better, professionally as well as personally.
22. Offer your feedbacks:
Productive employees will be motivated and appreciate the feedback. Employees will feel valued when they are offered positive strengthening and communicated about their contribution to the company’s success. It is not about appreciating generally but mentioning specific tasks that were carried out well by the employee.
23. Ask for employee opinion:
Your employees will feel respected when you involve them in the decision making process or brainstorming. Be confident to ask the employees for their opinion on projects and new benefits offered. You can even ask the entire employee department to give you their feedback on their team leader or opinion on a system. This is a constructive way to value and involve your employees.
24. Display gratitude:
Having a company culture of appreciation is very crucial. A workplace where employees are recognized for their good work will elevate an organization throughout. This will enhance inventiveness, generates credibility and augments bottom-line results. Just a simple ‘Thank you’, when an employee excels in a project and travels an extra mile for it, will do wonders.
25. Pay employees, they are worth:
It is a common practice to pay employees within a limited range. And so the top employees often earn 20 to 30 percent more than the average employees, whilst their performance is of complete 100% or even better. Thus there is a need to have a wide distinction so that your top employees do not quit.
Making the office a better place to work will not just help you retain your current employees but will attract the interests of prospective recruits too. The above ways will help you transform the office into a better place where people are happy to work and show high productivity.
