I was at a birthday party in which my son was invited, and whilst I got chatting to the parents I watched as my son played with the other kids at the party and realised how this play time got them all to make deeper and closer relationships. Whilst most of their time is spent at school learning, they also have the essential element each day - fun and play.
This can be during their lunch break, or as I saw at the party, with the social events they are invited to. Why then, as we get older and begin to create our own teams within our business, do we not consider the fun element to building our rapport and connections with our employees? As a business owner, you may be wondering if fun really is a good use of your time and resources, but I suggest to you that this is an essential element to helping you retain the best staff, and attract A+ candidates.
When you look to the best companies who have grown with key players in their industry wanting to work for them, it’s often the workplace mentality which is a deciding factor. According to a study, researchers found that happy employees can be up to 20% more productive than those which say they are unhappy, with salespeople raising sales by 37% when they are in a happy state of mind within the workplace.
Fortune’s 100 best companies to work for shared a rise of 14% per year from 1998 to 2005, showcasing that they were seeing that their company worth was perceived as better year on year, versus only a 6% rise for companies which were not seen to be in the top 100 companies.
It’s not all about salary, the factors which make employees feel cared for, feeling like they matter, and that their work is important are key elements when it comes to ensuring happiness in the workplace.
Another element is the ability to continue to grow the skills they are passionate about, so truly ask your team what skills they want to grow, and the tasks they enjoy the most so that, if you can, you can give them these tasks moving forward and potentially help to train them in the skills they love most. I also find that having fun extras in my company have worked wonders for building team relationships, such as burger Fridays (we have recently added this to our weeks, and it has been a wonderful way to get together over lunch and just catch up with one another).
Obviously, this cannot be done in every company, but there are other ways to help build these key foundations for happy teams - birthday celebrations, out of office get togethers, a Christmas party, and acknowledging more than just work performance. What are the best ways you have seen, and potentially implemented into your company, that have excelled at creating a work environment that employees want to stay in?
