Employers that spend a little time making the workplace and the work completed a little fun keep employees longer. The company culture is less stressful and stronger work relationships are built. Happier employees build stronger companies. These five options will help you create a fun working environment that will leave you with potential new hires begging for a job.
Create a Game Room
Playing while at work? Yes, absolutely. Take the time to create a game room with video game consoles and a few table games. When your employees feel stressed, they can go blow off some steam on company time. The lesson you will learn here is how having fun at work can make employees more productive.
To ensure that you have a good enough variety for all of your employees, conduct a poll to see what types of games or stress-releasing activities your employees would enjoy the most. Creating a workout space off of the game area is also ideal for stress relief and friendly “strongman” competitions.
Interoffice Competitions
Create competitions between departments and within departments. A little friendly competition gets people motivated and excited to do their jobs, especially when there is a reward at the end. When the boss can make work fun, employees are happier. In fact, employers working to improve company culture by bringing fun into the workplace report 86-percent happier employees.
Create a wall of winners, and just include simple Polaroid photos, to keep down cost, recognizing top performers. Rewards can be something like a paid day off, a casual department attire day, or even a catered lunch. Employees appreciate these gestures and are happier with their jobs. One example of a company doing this is Quality Formations.
Employee Outings
There is nothing wrong with scheduling an outing with employees, just for fun. You can choose to close shop for a day or schedule the outing for a time when the business is closed. What this does is creates friendships within the workplace. Those that can play well together often work well together. Outings should have absolutely nothing to do with work or the business. Everything should be left casual and fun.
The goal is to get multiple departments speaking to each other, creating stronger bonds because those employers are more powerful as a team when they’re on the same page. Interaction in a casual, fun setting helps bridge strains between employees and multiple departments.
Media Room
How will a media room make your employees happier? Well, streaming services are all the rage and binge watching, and then casually chatting about episodes on social media, is something that can be done at work – without the binge part. Create a media room with multiple watching areas, enough for about three groups of employees to watch separate shows.
In the media room, you’ll want sound barriers in place and access to all of the trending movie and TV streaming services – so that employees can watch popular shows together and discover common ground. Sometimes, your employees might just need a 30-minute TV break or an afternoon off to watch a movie. You can rotate movie breaks by breaking departments into groups so that all departments are covered while part of the group enjoys some downtime.
You might just notice more employees making plans to hang out after work when they start having more fun while at work.
Schedule Specific Types of Breaks
Just about every employer offers scheduled breaks plus a lunch break. But what are employees doing on these breaks? Likely checking social media, which is also likely to cause them stress or a shift in moods. Create specific types of breaks, such as snack breaks, powernap breaks, and serenity breaks. This is a strategy to build a fun work culture that’s also productive because your employees will have recharged themselves and refocused their minds.
Closing Thoughts
It might be a big financial investment for your business to incorporate some of these elements, but it will be well worth it when you have happy employees that are more productive. You’ll also see more employees coming to work every day because they will look forward to break time, lunchtime, and the other perks that come along with jobs well done.
What do you think are the most important aspects of keeping employees happy at work?
