How to promote productivity in the workplace
The corporate culture plays a large role in how productive and happy employees are. Teambuilding strategies are an important tactic for creating positive corporate cultures, and leaders need to take the time to review and change their cultures as necessary.
Leaders should constantly assess their company culture to promote productivity and happiness within the workplace. With so many articles written on the topic, this article references the following resources:
- 5 Strategies to Build a Fun Work Culture That’s Also Productive
- How to Jumpstart a Stalled Corporate Culture of Innovation
- Want a Workplace Employees Love? Let Them Experience it Before it Exists
- LGBT Update: Corporate Culture and Leadership Key to supporting LGBT professionals in your team
- 5 High-Performing Habits to Instill in Your Culture
- What HR Needs to Know About Social Media & Company Culture
With teambuilding strategies, leaders can promote a productive and happy workplace culture.
Take breaks. Take breaks, and encourage your team members to take breaks as well. While it may seem like working without breaks will lead to more productivity, this is not the case at all, states 5 Strategies to Build a Fun Work Culture That’s Also Productive. Breaks are an important element to productivity because breaks allow team members to decompress and clear their minds. A clear and fresh mind will then lead to better focus and creative problem solving, rather than continuously working the entire duration of the shift. Leaders should take breaks as needed and encourage their team members to do the same.
Encourage friendships. A great company culture encourages its team members to be friendly both on and off the clock. By being friendly outside of work, team members will get along better while working, which leads to teams that are more successful. To promote better team member relationships, leaders should facilitate opportunities for socialization outside of work, such as lunches with team members or informal events with team members and their families.
Jumpstart innovation. Driving innovation means focusing on creative solutions for problems and processes and using those ideas to create products or services that add value to others, says How to Jumpstart a Stalled Corporate Culture of Innovation. Rather than only focusing on internal factors and processes, leaders should also focus on external factors, such as competition and market factors, to avoid long-term failures. To jumpstart an innovative culture, leaders need to be intentional with the changes they implement. Reward team members when they embrace the new processes, and be patient with the process as change takes time.
Seek – and offer – feedback. Leaders cannot effectively implement change within the workplace without feedback. Open communication is essential for the success of any program, and leaders need to take the time to gather feedback from employees, according to Want a Workplace Employees Love? Let Them Experience it Before it Exists. Pilot programs are one way that leaders can test their change initiatives, and by committing to listening to feedback from participants, leaders can create a better program after the initial trial runs.
Demolish discrimination. Discrimination in the workplace is a killer for an effective company culture, says LGBT Update: Corporate Culture and Leadership Key to supporting LGBT professionals in your team. Companies that do not address discrimination or turn a blind eye to it experience a loss of talent and lower engagement rates from their employees. Discrimination is not always blatant, and it occurs in many forms. One form of discrimination is found with employees who feel the need to hide their personal lives. By not feeling comfortable enough to share their personal lives with other employees, these employees experience more distraction in the workplace, as well as exhaustion. With this type of culture, everyone in the company suffers. Leaders should address discrimination, in all of its forms, head-on to demolish prejudice in the workplace.
Reflect. Processes that promote critical reflection among employees leads to a better company culture all around, states 5 High-Performing Habits to Instill in Your Culture. Team members, and leaders, need to understand how they work best and where they fit within the organization, which is learned through self-reflection. Through after-action reviews, team members should reflect on a specific task’s intent, outcome and behaviors and assumptions of those involved that led to any discrepancies between the intent and actual outcome.
Pay attention to the online presence. With the advent of social media, a company’s culture now expands to online, according to What HR Needs to Know About Social Media & Company Culture. Leaders need to understand that the company’s culture is influenced by the online conversations and messages from others regarding the company’s brand. This is important to understand because leaders have limited control over some aspects of their company culture. The best way to embrace this aspect is by understanding its impact, monitoring social networking sites, encouraging positive activity on social media and implementing a social media plan and policy.
With proper teambuilding strategies, leaders can build a collaborative and productive company culture that promotes happiness among employees. To encourage productivity, leaders should take and offer breaks, encourage friendships, focus on innovation, offer and seek feedback, demolish discrimination, self-reflect and pay attention to the company’s online presence. Along with a program such as the 6 Principles that Build High Performance Leadership Clinic, leaders can learn how to build effective teams that lead to a successful company culture.
Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc. by Dianne Crampton
About TIGERS Success Series, Inc.
TIGERS Success Series is a Bend, Oregon Team Development Consultant that helps leaders build cooperation among employees and collaboration between departments. We have been doing this for over two decades providing diagnostics and customized team interventions for committed leaders and their teams. In October we are crowd funding to take our diagnostics to an all new level. For a preview of the rewards given in this campaign, click the link on the left.
