Ways to have a healthy office environment
Do you want to have an extremely productive office? If the answer is yes, then you will want to keep your employees happy and satisfied because the enterprise cannot function without them. With an effective force of employees, you can create a strong and healthy culture that becomes the backbone of your organization.
A healthy office environment is a vital component to help you realize your goals. A manager can make subtle changes to get a variety of results. It is in your hands to decide whether you want your office to be the trendsetter in your field or just another office where employees come and go for the sake of their salary. Little changes from attitude to culture can make employees look forward to coming to work and also help you expand your operation for the benefit of the entire office.
First things first, get the right people for the job to meet your goals within deadlines. Make sure you hire the right kind of business consultants for the job. You can also opt to go with a reputable HR Outsourcing firm and hire people who are qualified and have a healthy attitude towards work.
Team players are always good to have.
Make sure you get rid of people who spoil the office environment. It may not seem a tangible factor at first, but it will show up in your books as productivity goes down eventually. People will be relieved rather than miss that one or few bad employees who bring down the morale of the entire office. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and you need to practice that at your workplace. We spend a large part of our lives in the office, and a lot of employees even call it their second home.
An office that is effectively illuminated, clean and congenial will make it a welcome place for your employees to work. It will reduce friction between people because it encourages them to look at the silver lining rather than focus on the problems.
Solutions are found better in a comfortable environment rather than an uncomfortable and dingy environment. Get comfortable office furniture because when you expect your employees to work for hours in one place, their backache can become your headache. You cannot expect an employee to be completely focussed for eight or more hours at a time. Apart from the lunch break, give them a games room or a lounge where they can kick back and relax for a while so that they can get back to work with complete focus.
If they have no retreat for those slow days, and there are lazy days in every office, it can be a genuine and rare event or manifest into a regular issue. Let your staff unwind when they want so that they know that their manager trusts them to do their work and treats them like a human being who has good and bad days.
Let your employees speak their minds and welcome their ideas. You can choose to go with their ideas or ignore them altogether if they are not feasible but let them be heard. Have a whiteboard and give all your employees markers to jot down their ideas on ways to improve the way things are done. Kinks in the implementation of plans can be worked out with a lively discussion immediately. It is an excellent way to improve office interaction and motivate introverts to speak up. Give feedback on both doable and unfeasible ideas. Tell the employees why some ideas cannot be implemented.
If you say no, without explaining the constraints you face as a manager then it can make you look like an arrogant boss who only does as he/she chooses.
Keeping things transparent is a great way for employees to feel invested in the company so that they enjoy every success and feel the pain of every loss.
