When you have a business and you hire people, it is all about making it a great place for them to work. Because when it is a great place for them to work, it makes a difference to how they work, their motivation, and their drive to help the business to succeed. A business is only going to be as successful as its employees work for it to be, so making sure that they are taken care of it important.
Many large companies like Unilever and Goldman Sachs know how important employee satisfaction is for retention and progression. So they create wellbeing sites and on-site gyms for their employees, as well as other initiatives to help them to be healthy and happy, and gives them some benefits to working where they work. For smaller businesses it can be a trickier thing to do, but can certainly be worth looking into some ways that you can create a positive environment for your employees.
It can start from where they work. You may have space in an existing office, or perhaps you will be starting from scratch. Either way, adapting it for your employees is a great idea. You should think about outside space too. In built-up cities that can be difficult (but there should be local green space for them to go to). However, if you have some outdoor space where you work, it can be a good idea to make sure that you are making the most of what you got. It could mean looking for tipper truck hire to help you to clear the space to create a garden or pond perhaps. You could also create a patio area for outdoor exercise or even for doing work outside. But as you can probably imagine, it does make a difference when you’re able to be outside and enjoy the fresh air, as well as have somewhere to have a walk around.
You may already be doing some things for your team. You might celebrate birthdays with cakes or order pizzas for late meetings. But just doing things like that from time to time isn’t going to really be enough. The occasional extras like that are all well and good. But if they aren’t looking at the main issues that your employees have or addressing their day to day concerns, then it can almost be a bit of a waste. So here are some ideas for you, to help you to create a space that will help your employees love coming to work each day. Is there anything that you have experienced before that you’d think works really well? It could be great to hear what you think.
Be Organized
As a business owner there is a lot of information that you will have that you need to track off at work. From business plans to marketing copy, there is a lot of information to store and keep track of. But when there are important work and business related things to monitor, then the smaller matters of keeping a workspace organized and tidy may not rank too high on your priority list. But the things is, when it comes to motivation and productivity, having a place that isn’t organized and sorted can have an impact. So making organization a priority can help all of the team to be more productive and get more work done.
Create Comfort
This might sound like a bit of an obvious one, but having an office space that is comfortable is going to help the whole team to enjoy being at work and helping them to be more comfortable. And having an office that is comfortable can even help with the happiness of your employees. For small businesses this is something that needs to be looked at and considered, especially if you are leasing a space. This is simply because when you are looking round, you are likely to be leasing an office based on the price rather than the layout and design. So it may need some modifications to the space once you are in there, to make it a comfortable space that allows you to be organized and create an environment that is conducive to work.
Make It a Community
When you have a community feel in the office, rather than just a colleague feel, it can make a difference to how everyone feels about what is going on. This can be an environment where people feel like they don’t owe anyone anything in particular, and help each other just to help each other. Some work environments are going to be easier to create this than others, and it does depend on who you have got working there. But when you do things like celebrating the small things and arranging team days or team evenings, it can help everyone to make friends and get along. And when this happens it can make the workplace a better place to be, and people are likely to work harder when they know that if they aren’t doing what they should, they will be having an impact on their friends, rather than just calling them their colleagues.
Implement Flexible Working
There are some industries where flexible working really isn’t going to be possible. But there are plenty of industries where flexible working is going to work. So if you can, and yurs is one of the industries where it can, it is worth looking into. It can create a more family-friendly atmosphere, as well as less of a rigid schedule. It shows trust in colleagues too, and there have been plenty of studies on this that have found that flexible working doesn’t hinder productivity. In fact, it is said to make the productivity even greater when people have the chance to work remotely or from home. The reason it works is that when people sit down when they’re working from home, they are sitting down to get their work done in an allotted amount of time. In an office there can be more chat and distractions, as well as employees needing to deal with issues at home or personal admin when at work. When they’re working flexibly, it means that they can still deal with what they need to, but can start work earlier or finish later to get the job done.
Bring the Outside In
Plants are a wonderful to incorporate into your workplace. Not only do they look good and soften the look of the place (to give it less of a corporate feel), they can help to purify the air. And all of this combined can make them a lovely addition to the office, and it adds a pop of color to the place as well. Many interiors experts will talk about how good plants are to have in the home, and the same can go for your office space as well.
Perks at Work
While most people will be there for the wage that they get and the job satisfaction, there are always going to be good things that happen when you are able to offer some benefits or perks for your employees. It can help your employees to feel more valued, more important, and give them an extra ‘reward’ for working for you. In the early days this can be tricky to think about as you will have a pretty tight budget. But even being able to negotiate a discount at a local gym for your staff can help. Or perhaps employees can get their birthday off work. Just have a think about what might be possible for your business, your employees, and your budget, and then you can go from there.
Fix Lighting
From a physical point of view, the lighting that is in the office can be a big distraction if it is not done right. If the lighting isn’t right, it can also lead to things like headaches and vision problems as people try to navigate working in an office with bad lighting. Staring at a computer screen for long amounts of time in bad lighting can have an impact, so it is something that you need to be aware of.
Where possible, natural light is going to be the best choice. But as has been stated, if you are leasing an office space, you often don’t get much choice in the matter. If you can though, make sure you opt for the space with better lighting. It can make the whole place a productive and more conducive place to be. If the desks can face looking out of windows rather than just out into the office, then it can help productivity as well, as they are looking out at something natural and calming.
How do you think creating a positive work environment helps? Is there anything that works best for you when you’re at work? It would be good to hear your thoughts on this to help any startup entrepreneurs to get their business off in the right way.
