Creating A Happy Office
You don’t have a happy office by accident. You can have the makings of one, of course, but you usually have to encourage it along by manipulating the physical and social environment a bit. Here’s how.
Let natural light in
This is probably the best thing you can do, as natural light helps to keep people’s spirits up and maintains a healthy circadian rhythm. If your staff are sleeping well, they’ll feel and perform really well. When you visit Cattaneo Commercial to see its properties, look for ones with lots of windows.
Keep it clean and comfortable
If your office space looks and smells great, is easy to move around in and everything works, then people will want to come into work. Make sure bulbs all work, all your plants are alive and the coffee machine produces something other than hot mud! Your staff will appreciate the efforts you make and they’ll benefit from spending eight or more hours in a nice place.
Offer quiet spaces
Even if your office is mainly open-plan, try to provide a couple of quiet rooms so that people can take private phone calls, concentrate really hard on something tricky or even take a 30-minute power-up nap. A quick sleep is as effective as a cup of coffee sometimes.
Make sure your door is always open
If staff feel that they’re listened to, they’ll stay longer – it’s that simple. Employees who feel side-lined, ignored or unvalued will start to complain and look for other jobs.
Install recreation areas or facilities
If you have the space, get in a ping-pong table or even an old-fashioned Space Invaders game. A quick bash-about with a bat can loosen up any stuck creativity and also encourage staff rapport and cohesion. Offering an office lunch once a week helps to build team spirit too.
Bring in some health and fitness initiatives
You could start offering a small weekly prize for the person who’s racked up the most steps on their pedometer, for example. You may well have to provide these pedometers, so why not use them as an advertising opportunity and brand them? Or alternatively, you could organise fruit baskets and healthy snacks to be delivered once or twice a week.
There’s also the “bring your child/dog/parrot to work” day. These prove particularly popular with larger companies as the sight of a cute toddler or pup will get people from disparate departments actually talking to each other! You may have to draw the line at bearded dragons or tarantulas, though…
Keep meetings short
Excessively lengthy or frequent (or excessively frequent lengthy meetings) are an absolute productivity killer. On average, professionals attend 60 or so meeting each month and a lot of these meetings don’t actually have a real purpose! Unless you actually think that stopping people from getting on with their basic job remit is a valid purpose. Try to do as much as you can through group emails or a messaging system so you’re not dragging people away from their desks.
© New To HR
