Creating a Positive Work Environment

Creating a positive work environment is a must with the stress and pressure many are feeling during and coming out of this pandemic. Doing things to actively engage employees and increase their wellbeing promotes better mental health. Happier employees tend to stay longer at their company, deliver higher quality of work, and be more productive. But these benefits are only attained when there is support from the employer and where employees feel valued. Today, people are looking for jobs where they feel appreciated, feel like they belong, and feel like they can grow. At Casa, we have worked for years on creating a positive work environment where everyone feels comfortable. What can you do to create a positive work environment?

Five Tips for Creating a Positive Work Environment:

• Celebrate Your Staff’s Accomplishments
• Emphasize Teamwork
• Have an Open Line of Communication
• Conduct a Yearly Staff Survey
• Focus on Providing Growth Opportunities

Celebrate Your Staff’s Accomplishments 

Do something special to celebrate birthdays and work anniversaries. Buy a cake or small treat, and post something on social media to encourage others to send their good wishes. Another thing you can do is create a video where co-workers talk about their accomplishments, or ask their families to participate.

Beyond that, celebrate throughout the year when people are doing a good job and create a recognition program. Maybe you can encourage shoutouts for everyone at the start of every meeting, or give out a token that they can redeem when they have helped out with a special project. These small gestures go a long way and show your employees that you listen to them and see their hard work. 

Emphasize Teamwork

Emphasizing teamwork mentality is a great way to promote a positive work environment. Fostering this mentality will encourage everyone to band together to get through tough times and celebrate their hard work. When you have this mentality in place, and a problem comes up or there is staff shortage, it will prevent the creation of unnecessary friction. Teamwork mentality promotes listening, collaboration, and trust, thus making people feel more comfortable in bringing up new ideas. 

Have an Open Line of Communication

This is key to avoiding possible resentment in the future. If you have an open communication policy then people will be more open, feel comfortable bringing things up to their managers, and work through issues instead of hiding them. Open communication reassures everyone that no problem is too small and encourages conversations between employees to problem solve and be more professional. 

Conduct a Yearly Staff Survey

Not everyone will feel comfortable voicing their concerns in person, thus giving employees various opportunities to express their concerns and give feedback is important. An anonymous staff survey is beneficial to get concrete answers that you can take the time to process. Ask questions such as: What do you value most about your manager? Do you think our new policy concerning BLANK has had a positive impact for you? Do you have any comments regarding how we can keep supporting you? 

After you have conducted the survey, take the results seriously and analyze them with a team. Have a meeting where you discuss the results and create a detailed plan as to how you will improve and implement concrete change. During these meetings you can get hung up on just the negative and think you are doing everything wrong, so remember to always ask what you are already doing right so that you can continue doing those things. 

Focus on Providing Growth Opportunities

One thing we have learned from this pandemic is that people are interested in learning to advance their careers. Growth opportunities, encourage staff to be engaged and set goals for themselves. Carry out workshops for your employees not only regarding how they can do their jobs better, but also include workshops showing how they can leverage their skills in other fields or positions. Make these workshops accessible to everyone by providing links online. Growth opportunities allow people to feel like they are taking on a career instead of just a job. It allows them to have a sense of achievement and subconsciously pushes them to be more engaged. 

Which ideas will you try to implement next? Inquire about opening your own Casa franchise to implement these ideas to positively impact the lives of many!