Building a positive work environment where everyone performs their tasks to the best of their abilities is a two-way street. On one side, your employees devote their time, efforts, and talents to drive your business forward and accomplish its goals within the allotted time frame.
On the other hand, your business must recognize their efforts and prioritize compensating them for the work they put in each day. Only then can you create a highly functional and collaborative workplace.
But, there's more to it than just compensation. As an employer, you must recognize the fact that your business can only perform as well as your employees do. Therefore, setting your employees up for success is the biggest investment you can make into your business.
You're probably wondering how to achieve this, and the answer is simple. You need to think of how to form an inspirational work environment that drives your employees forward and makes them feel valued. While it may sound complicated and expensive, there are many simple changes you can make within your organization to create an inspirational and positive work environment. Let us show you how.
How to Form an Inspirational Work Environment
Prioritize On-boarding and Training Protocols
Your company's onboarding protocols are the first interaction that new employees have with your work environment. They serve as the first impression, helping newcomers decipher the kind of workspace your company offers and how they can create a place for themselves within it.
There was a time, not too long ago, when onboarding meant doing rounds of the office to learn from older employees and figure out how the photocopier works. Luckily, those days are long gone as employers now understand just how important it is to have a well-developed system for onboarding new employees, which includes an orientation session, presentations of work expectations and guidelines, distribution of employee handbooks, etc.
Moreover, with hybrid work environments becoming increasingly popular, having effective onboarding protocols is now a necessity for all businesses. It is already quite daunting to be a newbie at any company, but to do it at a remote workspace makes things much more challenging. Reports show that new hire turnover in hybrid workspaces is quite high, with 20% of the employees leaving within 45 days of their employment. They don't even make it through the probation period!
Smart and effective onboarding protocols allow your company to battle these statistics by making new professionals feel welcomed. They are a great way to nudge them in the right direction, connect them to employee resource groups, and educate them on the workplace basics.
Create a Comfortable Workspace
Now that your employees are settling in well, you need to offer them a comfortable and highly productive space to work in. Your office work environment needs to be specially designed to improve workforce efficiency and encourage collaboration among teams. Your employees should feel empowered and comfortable so they can perform at their best capacity and drive the results your business seeks.
Remember, your employees can't work productively if their work environment is disruptive. This stands true for hybrid and remote workspaces as well. So, make sure you offer your employees a highly ergonomic work set up with proper lighting and minimal noise levels. A great way to accomplish this is by investing in FlexiSpot's products like Ergonomic Office Chairs and the Modern Floor Lamp.
The Modern Floor Lamp is available in two colors, black and white, to blend in perfectly with your general workplace aesthetics. It comes with a 9W-LED bulb included and has a foot switch for maximum ease of use. The lamp's height has an additional easy-adjust feature that gives you maximum control over the flow of light.
Aside from making your office environment a highly productive one, you can also consider numerous measures to cater to your hybrid and remote employees.
Hybrid Work Employees: If your team is coming to the office every few days, it is best to bring in adjustable standing desks and ergonomic chairs. You should also ensure that all computer screens are well-positioned to reduce back or neck strains and work on creating a temperature-regulated environment so your employees can work comfortably.
Remote Work Employees: If your employees are working completely from home, you can offer them a monthly stipend to spend on creating a highly functional home office. It would allow them to invest in ergonomic products like desk converters to perform better each day.
Promote Diversity and Inclusivity
Establishing a diverse and inclusive workplace culture should be one of your company's primary goals. It creates a welcoming environment for individuals from different ethnicities, genders, backgrounds, and walks of life, all coming together to offer your immense business value. It expands your pool of talent and allows you to bring in new perspectives to the workplace, which directly promotes creativity, collaboration, and innovation.
Some effective ways of promoting diversity and inclusivity in your workplace are by encouraging everyone to share their pronouns and requesting all individuals to use them properly. You can also establish a committee of diverse workers to come up with new initiatives and respond to workers' demands.
Moreover, your HR team should incorporate diversity protocols within the hiring strategy to ensure that people are judged purely based on their skills and talent. Hire people to add diversity to your company culture instead of hiring only those who would fit into the present workplace.
Develop an Employee Recognition Plan
Everyone wants to feel appreciated for the work they put in, be it in their personal lives or even on a professional scale. While praises and words of encouragement are excellent, motivating factors, there's a little something extra you can put in to motivate your employees and inspire them to perform better.
An employee recognition plan is what we're talking about. Well-designed and implemented employee recognition plans have proven to increase workplace motivation and drive professionals to perform better. Such plans increase employee loyalty and bring about higher satisfaction scores from customers.
They are also known to increase employee retention and help companies move past high employee turnover rates while also improving your overall work culture.
Encourage Team Communication and Collaboration
As the leader, it is your responsibility to ensure that your employees don't feel left out, especially those who are working on a hybrid model. That being said, you obviously can't be in every room to ensure effective communication between team members. But what you can do is create a highly collaborative atmosphere within the company culture to ensure all voices are heard and valued.
A great way to do this is by encouraging ideas and feedback from employees of every level, be it a manager or their subordinates. Giving people the room to voice their opinions is one of the best ways to make them feel included and encourage effective collaboration. You can also start including the respective coworkers on appropriate email chains and make team priorities easily accessible to all.
Always keep in mind that simple, straightforward communication is the best way to hone the spirit of collaboration within your organization. Opting for open-door policies also helps in creating a sense of community within your employees and promotes healthy communication to support their work productivity.
Offer Autonomy to High-Achieving Employees
While compensations, appraisals, and vacation days are great motivating factors, there is something else you should also consider - offering autonomy to high-achieving employees.
As you go about a work day, you will notice that some employees tend to take more responsibility and work better without needing a supervisor to constantly look over their shoulders. These employees put in the work and take the initiative to improve the overall work environment, even without directly benefiting from it.
This act of taking ownership and wanting to build a better workplace should be recognized and appreciated by offering increased autonomy to these employees. It increases their motivation, allows them to work more productively, and encourages effective leadership qualities that would help them climb up the corporate ladder.
Facilitate New Training and Learning Opportunities
When it comes to creating an inspirational and positive work environment, you also need to think of ways to offer value to your employees. Instead of just focusing on what they can bring to your business, also look into the many ways your company can help them grow their skills.
Not only would it allow them to develop essential technical and soft skills for their future career progress, but they can also use these skills on your company's goals and missions.
Training and continuous improvement programs keep your staff motivated to improve their performance and the quality of work they produce. You can set up workshops and arrange training modules for management development, team building, and advanced technological strategies and even use them to introduce new concepts within your current work streams.
All of these learning opportunities come together to create a work environment that is mutually beneficial for your business growth and employees' personal development.
