Skip to content

News & Events

5 Ways to Create a Positive Culture while Promoting Productivity

Find me on:

Maintaining a strong workplace culture has become a must-have for business owners today. In many cases, culture may be nearly as valuable to a job seeker as salary and benefits. However, when creating a workplace that promotes a positive culture, business owners often walk the fine line of fun and productivity. As your company’s leader, it’s important to appoint a few employees to a company “culture committee” to lead the charge in promoting fun in the office so you can stay focused on moving the business forward.

Facilitating a fun and positive culture may be important to most business owners but, at the end of the day, the workplace is still a business that needs to stay profitable. We’ve put together five ways business owners can facilitate a positive and fun atmosphere in the workplace while staying productive and profitable:

1. Celebrate achievements and milestones

Birthdays, weddings, baby showers and personal milestones are all things to celebrate, so why not bring it to the office? Hosting a company-wide celebration not only acknowledges the employee being recognized, it also allows everyone else to take a needed break from work and partake in social interactions with peers they may not get to see very often. Company milestones and successes are even more reason to celebrate. By promoting company successes, employees will be encouraged to continue their hard work and increase productivity. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get together and celebrate personal or business successes.


2. Encourage friendship among employees

Multiple studies have shown that having a friend at work greatly increases both happiness and overall job performance. According to author Tom Rath, employees with a “best friend” at work are up to seven times more engaged than those who aren’t. A 2017 study by the International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences found that employees’ workplace friendships are a key factor in daily engagement and critical to performance. “An increase in employees’ workplace friendship reinforces their organizational identification and thereby enhances their job performance,” (IJHS, 2017).

EF Picture1

Source: International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

 


3. Have regular gatherings not related to business

Inside or outside of the office, meet with your team regularly and discuss topics outside of the business. This might seem counterintuitive to productivity, but these meetings are necessary to foster a healthy culture outside of the 9-5. Group meetings should be encouraged to ensure that employees don’t experience burnout with the daily grind of work. These meetings can range from happy hours after work to one-on-one personal meetings with a coworker. Getting to know coworkers’ lives outside of work not only enables employees to work more effectively with one another and increase cohesiveness on teams, but it also gets them out of work-mode. Sometimes, employees’ mental health and well-being away from work needs to be prioritized over business-as-usual.

4. Decorate the workplace 

As long as employees aren’t causing a distraction, decorating workspaces can be a creative outlet to express employees’ personalization and style. Workspace decorations not only provide self-expression to employees, but they can also serve as conversation-starters and reminders of the things they love or support. Research by the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that less personalization increases emotional exhaustion among office workers. Essentially, the more employees can personalize their spaces, the happier they are. And happier employees are more productive employees.

5. Lead by example

You’re the business owner, lead by example. As a leader, it’s your job to establish your company’s culture the way you deem fit for your employees. Promoting a positive culture is essential to promoting long-term productivity for the business. At the end of the day, it’s up to the business owner to implement and share a sense of personal care for his/her employees by treating them right. Company culture should always remain a priority for higher productivity and happiness among employees in the workplace.

Questions? Reach out to one of our qualified HR consultants for more ways to increase productivity on the job, or give us a call at 1.866.501.4942. Employer Flexible helps you get the most out of your employees — allowing you to impact what matters in your business.

Contact Us