Why is a positive working environment important, and how can I create one?

On average people spend at least one third of their life at work, which is a huge amount of time to either be happy or unhappy!

We’ve all heard that happy employees are more productive, but as an employer how can you make sure that your employees are happy?

Good company can make any situation better and research from the Gallup Organization suggests that people who have a friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their job. Which can provide huge benefits to overall performance and profitability.

But good company at work involves more than just friends. We need good bosses too, after all “people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses.”

In this blog we will be looking at ways you can make a positive working environment that encourages friendships to form while maintaining a focus on the bottom line and overall performance within the business, and ways for bosses to ensure they’re keeping their teams happy.

Make it social

Socialising is obviously a great way to build relationships, but it needs to extend beyond lunch breaks and Christmas parties.

Internal communication channels can be an amazing way to encourage conversations within the workplace while maintaining a level of professionalism.

You can create groups for sharing good news both inside and outside of the business, or groups focused on hobbies such as baking and fitness to share tips and generate a platform for friendlier conversations while breaking down some of the internal barriers that might be present.

Such as being in different departments, rooms and even buildings!

Make it constructive

Career progression and development plays a massive part in workplace satisfaction. So, it’s important that you let people know how they can improve. But this involves more than just saying something is wrong and it needs to be fixed.

You need to tell people; what’s wrong, why it’s wrong, how this affects the business, how it needs to be improved, how the improvements can be made and then give them the tools to be able to learn how to try and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Make it inspirational

Again, career progression and development play a massive part in workplace satisfaction. However, you need to consider more than just the reactive elements of this.

Each employee should have a development plan in place to help them progress their career.

Make it respectful 

As an employer, especially in a smaller company, you may find yourself wanting to be everyone’s friend and perhaps oversharing? It’s important to remember you’re at work so you need to set some clear boundaries.

You also need to remember you can’t have favourites and you need to treat everybody the same way. So, the next time you invite anyone out for after work drinks, remember you need to invite the whole workforce not just those that you like.

Make it macro

Micromanaging is annoying at best and incredibly destructive at worst.

You have a hiring process to ensure you hired the right person, let them do their job. Otherwise you’ll be damaging culture, morale, confidence and performance.

Let’s talk.

There’s a lot to think about when you’re trying to create a positive working environment, and there are a lot more points to consider than this blog covers.

But we are here to help and one of our HR consultants could be the key to you creating the ideal environment within your company.

If you want to take the first steps in creating a positive working environment fill in our contact form below and one of our incredibly helpful and knowledgeable HR consultants will be more than happy to help you.