As a business owner, you know how important it is to have a productive work culture. Productive employees are what will bring success to your company. To keep productivity high within your office, you need to create a positive work environment.
A positive work environment is ideal for employees to be as productive as possible. When a positive environment surrounds employees, they’re more likely to want to put in their best efforts. With as much of an impact as a positive work environment has on office productivity, it’s vital that you, as a business owner, know some essential tips for creating one.
Below are several tips on creating a healthy and productive work culture. Continue reading to find out more!
1. Only Hire Outstanding Employees
If you want employees to be productive, you need to hire employees ready to put in the effort. This means only hiring outstanding employees. If you hire the best of the best, you’re already one step ahead.
Here is how to ensure that you’re hiring the employees you need.
Conduct Multiple Interviews
Don’t conduct a straightforward interview and then decide from there. You need to conduct multiple interviews where you can take the time to make sure that they are the right fit for the company, and this isn’t something that you can know from one session.
Be sure only to ask questions that hold value and see if he or she would be a good fit with your current employees.
Take Personality into Consideration
Education and experience shouldn’t be the only qualifications you’re looking for. You need to consider personality as well. The characters of your employees are going to affect the work culture significantly.
The character and attitude of the new employee should match your company’s culture and vision for your work environment.
Have an Always Current List of Desired Qualities
This list should be a checklist marked off with each new hire, and that’s kept around to ensure all employees continue to follow it.
2. Acknowledge Your Company’s Reason
To have a stable work environment, you need to have a reason for your company. What’s your company’s role in the world? This is something that you need to ponder on and understand to teach to your employees.
Develop Company Values
First, you should have a set of company values that you believe are most important to you. What standards do you have that you expect each employee to abide by? What is your company’s mission?
Have these things written down and displayed in the office for a quick reminder when needed.
Test and Communicate Your Company Culture
Having set company missions and values written down isn’t where it stops. You also need to test your company culture regularly and communicate it with your employees. You can consider allowing employees to give anonymous feedback or fill out surveys to try it.
Be sure to test it regularly and make adjustments where needed. This keeps you and your employees working together on the culture consistently. Hold company meetings, send out emails, and more to communicate it.
A good work culture keeps your employees happy and productivity at a high.
Support a Good Cause
More people are willing to work for a company that supports a good cause. Find a way to give back to the community and support something that can genuinely benefit from your help. When people see that your company is working to give back to the community, they’ll be more willing to work for you and work well.
3. Create an Engaging Environment
A work environment where employees are engaged in their work is a work environment where employees are productive. Unengaged employees are the most significant factor in decreased productivity. The best way to prevent all of your employees from burning out is to be flexible with them in several ways.
Offer Flexible Hours
You can offer your employees flexible hours to help keep them engaged. Even if doing so isn’t something you can allow with the snap of a finger, it is something that you can work on gradually. For example, you can schedule days where your employees can work from home and send them away with some good tips on remaining productive in the home office.
Allow Employees to Work on Their Projects
Suppose you can allow your employees to work on their own projects while on the job, then you’re opening the door for many possibilities. This makes employees more willing to stay productive while at work if they can work on their projects. You never know what employees might come up with during their projects and how it might add value to your company.
Give Employees Your Respect
If you show your employees respect, they’ll respect you in return. And the final result of this is an increase in productivity because your employees are working for someone they feel is respecting them. Be sure to value them and not just their work to show this.
4. Provide an Efficient Work Space
The work environment must support hard work, focus, and company culture. Sure, you want the work environment to be relaxed, fun, and welcoming, but you also need enough dedicated space for focusing.
Control Noise Levels
For starters, you want to control the noise levels in the office. If there’s too much noise going on while your employees are trying to work, it could ultimately stress them out. To help reduce noise, you can have a closed-off room dedicated to those who need extreme quiet while working.
You can enforce quiet times during the day and limit the number of noises outside the office.
Keep All Information Accessible
A great way to decrease productivity is by having all the necessary information, resources, and tools scattered throughout the office. When workers search around the office for things they need, it takes time away from their jobs. To prevent this, have a designated area where all supplies are located and organized for easy finding.
Don’t Hold Invaluable Meetings.
Yes, meetings are an important part of ensuring that everyone works together and remains on task. However, you don’t want to have several invaluable meetings each month and only hold meetings that bring some value to your employees and you.
5. Build a Desirable Work Environment
You want a work environment where your employees feel wanted and welcomed. You want your employees to wake up each morning feeling ready to come to work that day. The more enjoyable the work environment, the more willing employees are to go into work in a good mood, ready to get the job done.
Play Background Music
A large percentage of employees work better when there’s music playing in the background. The background music that you play should be soft and not disrupting. If some need absolute silence, they can work in a quiet room.
Or, you can allow employees to bring their headphones to work and listen to their preferred music while they work.
Hand Out Free Food
Who doesn’t love free food? Not only will providing free food to your employees put them in a better mood for the day, but providing them with healthy food is a great way to give them energy and an excellent brain boost! You don’t have to provide loads of food each day, just some simple healthy snacks, energy bars, and coffee.
Improve the Layout and Color Scheme
The way your office is laid out can affect how your employees work. An open layout promotes productivity, while a closed-in layout does not. Having an open layout encourages employees to come to one another with questions or when seeking advice, and overall it enables them to work together.
You also want to think about the colours of your walls in the office. Different colours are aimed toward different types of work environments. Cooler colours are suitable for creating a relaxing space, and warmer shades are good for creating a creative space.
Increase Productivity with These Positive Work Environment Tips
If your office needs a hand in boosting productivity, you’ll want to keep these helpful tips in mind. Remember, a positive work environment is the best way to keep your employees happy and ready to come to work each day.
Are you interested in more advice on leadership? Click here to read our post on leadership advice that we can take away from Don Draper!
