Career Advice
5 Ways to Increase Positivity at Work
A happy and positive workforce is good for your staff’s wellbeing–and your bottom line. Make a start with these five tips.
Should you spend time trying to make work a brighter place? Positively.
Over the course of a lifetime, the average person spends 90,000 hours working. That’s some significant office time, so promoting positivity at work should be every leader’s priority—particularly since happy, optimistic people are known to be more productive, creative and financially successful. And this does not just apply to leaders. Almost anyone can make a positive impact with a bit of guidance. Here are 5 ways to make your workplace a more positive place.
1 Ensure people feel confident and challenged
Employees should be challenged without feeling in over their heads. Clear goals, development opportunities, reasonable work hours and a supportive team go a long way, so management should check in with employees regularly.
2 Give people latitude to be creative and heard
Most employees have great ideas about how to make the business better—it’s the reason they were hired. So, it should be easy to voice opinions and share ideas in the workplace. As an incentive, businesses can recognize employees for “idea of the month,” “feedback of the week,” or “funniest story of the week,” and even reward them with a small gift card or item of company swag. People are happier when colleagues listen and encourage them to innovate.
3 Celebrate successes, big and small
It makes good sense to look for the positive in every situation and celebrate it, such as announcing “wins for the week”, whether this constitutes big news or everyday victories (especially the everyday victories). Recognizing small successes, even while working through a rough patch, helps the team feel appreciated and stay optimistic.
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4 Mix up the way you communicate or interact with your team
Are team meetings scheduled at the same time, in the same format, and in the same place every week? It helps to consider a little variety, such as meeting in different time slots, changing up the format, reordering the structure, or adding fun icebreaker activities.
5 Encourage social interactions
A little something to look forward to goes a long way. Simple things—like a wellness challenge, book club, trivia contest, or happy hour—can break up monotony. When employees associate their job with recognition and fun, they will do better work.
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