Is your team’s morale low? Do they feel unengaged and lack motivation? Or maybe they have difficulties working together? If the answer is YES, then you must start building a better work environment. But don’t worry, we’ll help you out!
In our previous article we talked about the toxic work environment and how to survive it. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, please do after this.
So now we want to focus on the opposite, today we’ll discuss the steps you need to take in order to build an amazing environment for your team.
According to modern psychology, there are 5 steps to building the ideal work environment. Here’s what you need to do:
- Encourage positive emotion
- Engage the team
- Build relationships
- Provide meaning
- Recognize employees’ achievements
Here at SLA Leadership we love to make things easy to remember, so here’s an acronym for you:
P – Positive emotion
E – Engagement
R – Relationships
M – Meaning
A – Achievements
Positive emotion
How do you encourage positive emotion? Well, think about what makes your team happy. What can you do to bring a smile to their face?
Here are some behaviors that you need exercise regularly to achieve this goal:
- Hold a weekly social meeting – 30 minutes should do the job
Make sure to schedule this during the working hours; if you schedule it before or after, don’t be surprised if very few employees attend it. I recommend that you schedule this for Friday afternoon, towards the end of the day.
Also, since this is a social meeting, discuss non-work-related topics only. Inevitably the discussion will sometimes steer back towards work issues, so make sure to address that. These 30 minutes are sacred, no work talk!
- Hold themed days
Celebrate national holidays, Halloween, Appreciation day, Customer Service day, you name it. Find any reason to have the team disconnect from the routine a few times a year. And if you could get free food served at these events even better! People love food!
- Organize team building events outside of work
Preferably, these would also be scheduled during the working days. Take the team to a nice place. Have them take part in team competitions, give them the chance to communicate, work together and get to know each other.
- Practice random acts of kindness
Say “thank you” often and provide gift cards when possible. Make the team feel appreciated!
Engagement
To get the team engaged means to get them in a state of flow. When you are in a state of flow, your work is your only focus, there are no distractions, your work energizes you, and time flies fast.
To get the team in this state you need to have them engaged with work that is both rewarding and challenging enough to fit their current capabilities. If the task is too easy, they’ll get bored and lose focus; and if the task is too hard they’ll get tired, frustrated and eventually give up.
The secret is to always match the task to the person. And in order for you to do so, you need to have a very good understanding of each team member’s strengths and weaknesses.
Relationships
We are social beings, our power is in numbers and we thrive when being part of a strong group.
You, the leader, are responsible for strengthening the bonds between your team members. It’s your job to develop the team spirit and have your team work towards the common goal as a whole.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Pair team members up and have them handle a task that would be too difficult for a single person to tackle
- Encourage healthy competition
Once in a while split the team into small groups and have them compete against each other, and upon winning have the winning group share the reward.
- Arrange shadowing sessions, have them learn from each other
Shadowing sessions are a powerful tool that should not only be reserved for the new-hires. You can also have tenured employees briefly shadow each other once in a while; you would be surprised how this can enrich their repertoire.
- Have all team members participate in brainstorming sessions
Give everybody a chance to speak and encourage them to build on each other’s ideas to reach the common goal.
Meaning
Having a meaningful job is serving an ideal that is greater than yourself. A meaningful job is a job that gives you the opportunity to be part of a group of like-minded people who work towards changing the world for the better.
You, the leader, need to make a habit out of showing your team how their work positively impacts the world. Show them how their work matters and how by doing their role they contribute to building and maintaining an impressively complex machinery.
So have them on a call with a happy customer and share the customer satisfaction surveys with them. Show them how their work makes a difference.
Achievements
In an optimal work environment the employees get rewarded for their accomplishments. And by “reward” I’m not referring strictly to a raise in pay. Remember that money can only take the employee so far. At a certain point money no longer acts as a motivating element.
The best way to reward performance is by assigning the individual more responsibility; have them do tasks that are more difficult, tasks that allow them to grow professionally.
Leaders, whenever you see potential in an employee, cultivate it! Dedicate at least a bit of your precious time to help top performers develop and grow into a role that better fits them and gives them the opportunity to contribute even more than before.
And keep in mind that both a step up the hierarchy and sideways can act as an achievement.