A happy employee works 12 percent better, at least according to some of the most recent surveys. However, happiness is a subjective category that an entrepreneur might not have complete influence over. One thing that a business owner or a manager does control is the office environment, even how work friendly it is. With this in mind and without further ado, here are five simple tips that can help you bring life to your workplace and, in this way, achieve a massive boost in productivity.
Eliminate the noise
The first thing you need to do is reduce the intensity of noise distractions. To do so, you need to make sure that your office is sound-insulated from the outside traffic. Apart from this, you might want to move your breakroom to the furthest part of the office, in order to ensure that people on break aren’t distracting those who are still working. Finally, you can make a minor investment in silent keyboards and noise canceling buds in order to provide every single member of your staff with some individual noise protection. Overall, noise is a serious productivity killer and, as such, it needs to become your office’s enemy No. 1.
Efficient and effective communication
In order to make the information flow around the office, you need to teach every single person in the leadership position how to effectively communicate. In other words, there’s a time to talk and a time to actively listen. When it comes to passing down some vital information, you need to make sure your orders and directives are clear and understood by everyone. As for the feedback, you need to make it clear that any member of your staff is free to tell you absolutely anything. Nothing kills the flow of information around the office like the atmosphere of fear and authoritarianism. If there’s a problem anywhere, you and your team need to be the first ones to know about it.
Enhance the ambiance
Visual stimuli are definitely a powerful tool in boosting your team’s efficiency. For instance, the amount of natural light in the room might have an influence on the morale of your staff. Apart from this, the air circulation is vital for your team’s ability to concentrate, while adding potted plants might induce an additional productivity boost.
The easiest way, however, to enhance an ambiance and make it a bit more work friendly is to repaint the place. Different colors have a different effect on your team, so, enhancing the ambiance of the room with some adequate paint might be the best solution. All you have to do is look for reliable local painters. For instance, if you are an NSW-based agency, narrowing down the search to commercial painters from Sydney might do the trick. As for the colors, yellow and green make a great work environment for creatives, while red and orange might be more suitable for your sales department or even your conference room.
Encourage your team to personalize their desks
When it comes to the issue of motivation, the intrinsic one is by far the most effective kind. Therefore, you should encourage your team to personalize their desks with photographs and mementos. In this way, they can remind themselves what this is all about. In fact, you can go one step further and allow your staff members to completely customize their desks. After all, it is their immediate surrounding and they should have full control over it. Supplies, documents, and devices should be arranged in the way they see logical, yet, some employees are reluctant to do so unless encouraged. It is up to you to give them your blessing.
Keep the place neat
Finally, in order to keep your office functional, you need to keep it neat. Clusters of trash are a visual distraction, as well as a health hazard. In other words, leaving them intact for a prolonged period of time might potentially increase the average time your employees spend on sick leave. Apart from that, they are also making foot traffic around the office more difficult and they are posing a problem from the standpoint of office organization. After all, it’s easy to imagine an important document or item getting lost at the bottom of a pile.
At the end of the day, in order to create a truly work friendly environment, you need to look at your company through the eyes of your employees. While this approach may not be 100 percent reliable, practicing empathy in this way may point out to more than a couple of problems you would have otherwise overlooked. At the very least, the above-listed five suggestions can serve as a great starting point.
