No matter what kind of business you run, or how much your workforce enjoys their jobs, you are inevitably going to hit some spells of low morale and low motivation during the work week. These new ways of keeping your workforce motivated should pay great dividends in office positivity and productivity gains.
Small treats: casual Fridays or dress up days
A small way you can make a positive impact on your office’s morale is to gauge the level to which people are used to dressing up or down. You can then offer a weekly casual day if there is a formal atmosphere, or a dress-up day if it sounds like something which would interest the majority of your employees.
These initiatives should never feel obligatory, so those who would rather not dress up or down to the occasion do not need to feel as if there is no choice but to do so, but everyone who wants to enjoy it can. See if this affects productivity by trialling it as a one-off thing: it is likely that the boost in optimism from those looking forward to casual Friday will cancel out any negligible drop in productivity from lowered standards of appearance.
Use a good professional network for employee wellbeing
Employee well-being is a wide-ranging topic which requires expertise and can require well-built support networks. If this is an area which concerns you it may be worth considering outsourcing your concerns to a specialist provider such as Lifeworks. These professional providers have large networks of councillors, coaches and other specialists available to make sure your staff will receive the best support possible.
Try the Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo, recommends breaking work down into 25-minute slots and taking short breaks after each session, to renew focus. This may look as if work is not getting done during these breaks but in the modern office this can be adopted as a model as never before, with inventions such as Slack allowing managers to check in with employees at set times every few hours to make sure the last few hours have all gone to schedule more or less.
With more scheduling apps available than ever before it is possible to give workers a great degree of freedom in plotting their days and very likely that through this technique you will see great results.
Frequent exercise breaks
This may sound the most disruptive and surprising of these suggestions but sitting down for long stretches of time every day has been found to be very bad for people. The recommended amount of weekly exercise for adults is 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of intense exercise a week, plus strength exercises. Many people feel short of this, but it is possible to do small, rejuvenating exercises at work.
Simple squats or stretches can seem like a daunting thing to do in group office space but if you lead by example to break the stigma of staying active you can bring health benefits to your whole team.