The working environment you provide for your employees could either motivate them to work or discourage them from working. So, in what ways can you make the working environment conducive for your workers? Let’s find out.
A great working environment is one in which employees are comfortable, happy, and satisfied. However, employees usually encounter pressure and stress at work that can make their tasks more difficult to carry out.
Work environments can either be negative or positive. A positive work environment promotes productivity and efficiency for employees. Alternatively, a toxic or negative workplace is physically, mentally, and emotionally draining.
With a good workplace environment, employees can express themselves verbally and creatively. In addition to increasing productivity, a positive working environment also increases support between and among workers.
Ultimately, a good working environment is beneficial to employees, employers, and the business. This article discusses the best ways to create a positive working environment for your employees. Let’s get right to it!
Ways to create a positive working environment for your employees
Below are the top actions you can carry out to promote a positive working environment.
Make the working environment comfortable
The workspace you make available for your workers should encourage and motivate them to do their work. But you should not only focus on their physical comfort; workplace comfort should also include psychological and cognitive needs.
Provide your employees with comfortable seating arrangements, well-aerated offices, and workspaces. Also, ensure they have excellent lighting, well-positioned computer screens, temperature-regulated spaces, etc. All these features promote good health and positively affect their emotional well-being.
Another way to make your employees comfortable is by granting them their Data Subject Access Request (DSAR). DSAR is a request by a data subject, in this case, your employees, to your business asking to know what personal information you collected and how you use the data. Granting them this request will strengthen their trust in you and your business.
Encourage communication and collaboration
Communication is very crucial to the growth of any business. So, encourage your employees to interact more freely amongst themselves and with you.
Communication helps to build your team’s foundation and establish trust among coworkers. Also, your employees develop a sense of community when they know they can share information freely and be themselves.
Encourage collaborations between departments in your organisation to contribute to your business’s progress. Technology has made it easier for your team members to communicate and collaborate efficiently in the workplace.
So, you should establish effective communication channels. Software like Slack and Zoom are helpful communication tools. Also, you can use Monday.com for easy collaboration in the workplace.
Provide opportunities for career development
When creating a better working environment for your employees, include opportunities to develop and progress in their careers. For instance, you can organise soft skills training sessions and create learning opportunities to practice these skills.
When you offer these training and career development opportunities, it shows your employees that you care about their growth. This will then lead to increased employee engagement, boost retention rates, and scale your business, as you will have more well-rounded employees.
Conduct regular check-ins
One great way to ensure the working environment is excellent for your employees is by checking in on them. If you operate a physical organisation, stop by your employees’ desks and check on them at least once a day.
On the other hand, if you have a remote workforce, you can send informal messages to your employees asking about their well-being. Your note to employees does not always have to be work-related. A simple and genuine “how are you?” goes a long way in helping your employees feel valued.
They will feel loved, appreciated, happy, wanted, and cared for in the workplace. Also, your employees will know that they are always on your mind. When this is the case, you will notice a positive change in the working environment.
Listen to your employees
Don’t be a boss that only gives out instructions without listening. When you ask your employees for their opinions on specific issues that concern the office or organisation, be ready to listen to everyone’s ideas. Don’t cut them off mid-sentence or become distracted when they are speaking.
Even if you may not take their ideas or run with them, listen to what they have to say. Conduct surveys and ask for feedback, suggestions, etc. Google forms have made taking surveys and feedback easier, so take advantage of it. 15Five and TinyPulse also allow you to quickly gather employee feedback on various issues within the office quickly.
Recognise and appreciate hard work
Employees love it when their bosses recognise, appreciate, and reward them for their hard work. So, establish reward systems at work. For example, you can organise inter-company competitions; the employee with the most sales in a day can get a bonus or a day off.
Also, you could give public recognition, special thanks, etc., to employees who have performed exceptionally. These rewards would encourage the employees who you rewarded to do more. At the same time, it will motivate other employees to work harder.
Prioritise onboarding and training
The sink-or-swim approach no longer works for businesses, especially if you want to build a high-performing team and a positive work environment. For this reason, you must prioritise the onboarding and training of your new hires.
Onboarding should last for at least five weeks. If you cannot dedicate that much time, use two weeks and make it count. The onboarding process should involve shadowing coworkers, attending meetings, locating, and studying important company files.
Several benefits come from onboarding your employees the right way. For instance, you will notice an increase in employee engagement when you prioritise onboarding and training. Also, you can be sure of better employee retention and attraction of top talent to your business.
Show concern about your employees’ health
When you focus on the health of your employees, you create an effective and efficient working environment that benefits your business. Note that health does not relate to the physical only; it is all-encompassing.
Your employees’ physical and mental health should be a priority in the workplace. When your employees are unhealthy, it affects the workflow. In addition, the state of your working environment can affect the health of your employees.
For instance, if the working environment is toxic, it can affect the mental and physical health of your employees.
Some of the things you can do to help with your employee’s health include:
- Give your employees access to services like online and telephone mental health support;
- Create a culture that encourages employees to talk freely and openly about their mental health struggles;
- If possible, manage a gym or arrange for discounts at the local gym near the office;
- Have health talks at work; and
- Organise workplace sports competitions.
Automate manual tasks
Your employees are happier when certain processes and tasks are completed in record time. Manual and repetitive tasks are time-consuming which means while your employees are working on them, they can’t carry out another assignment. These duties could be filing documents, customer service management, human resources, etc.
Luckily, there’s such a thing as automation. It involves using technology to accomplish these strenuous tasks and processes in the workplace. When employees use software and other tools that save time, they will be more productive and efficient.
Image: Pexels
Features of a positive working environment
Some things point out if a working environment is excellent or not. Therefore, when you look at the working environment you have provided for your employees, you have a lot of work cut out for you if you don’t recognise these characteristics.
Below are the top characteristics of a positive working environment.
Teamwork is valued
The principle of teamwork is essential in a great working environment. When teamwork is evident in an organisation, you can maximise productivity, causing the business to move forward.
Communication is key
If you discover little or no communication among employees or between management staff and other employees, something is wrong. Identify the problem and fix it immediately.
Trust among employees and employers
A significant characteristic of a positive work environment is trust. As an employer, your employees need to trust you. Also, there should be trust between coworkers.
If your employees always have reason to distrust you or one another, the working environment could become toxic. Again, a toxic work environment affects the productivity of a business.
Employee wellness is a priority
In a positive working environment, the state of your employee’s health is a concern to you as their employer. This means you should be willing to do all you can to ensure your employees are in the best state of health, physically and mentally.
Good relationships are maintained
If you want to know if your working environment is excellent, study the relationships in your organisation. If the relationships are healthy, then you are on the right track. But, if you discover that there are unhealthy relationships in your workplace, then you need to work on that.
Tools to help create a better working environment
There are tools that can help you create a better work environment for your employees. Below are some of them.
Osano
Osano is a platform that helps businesses stay in line regarding data privacy and protection. With the ever-increasing data privacy regulations, Osano ensures you remain compliant at all times.
This software ensures that all your employees’ data is protected. When you preserve the information you have about your employees with software like Osano, they will trust you and have no issues working with you.
Zapier
Zapier makes it easy to automate manual tasks, giving your employees time to focus on more critical work and increase productivity. Additionally, the software makes it easier for you to integrate other apps your employees use, making the workflow smooth. Finally, Zapier is user-friendly, meaning you can carry out most of the actions without any special training or tutorial.
Slack
Slack is one of the best platforms for communicating in the workplace. You can easily pass across messages to your team, and your team can easily discuss with one another as well. Furthermore, Slack helps to improve productivity in the workplace. With organised spaces called Channels, you can group people, messages, and files you are working on in one place, making them easy to access at all times.
Trello
This software allows you to collaborate, manage projects, and improve productivity all from one space. It encourages teams to work together to achieve their goals and visions for the business. Plus, as your team grows, you can customise and expand Trello as you like.
Lastly, Trello provides you with intuitive features that will give your team the ability to set up and customise workflows for any occasion, e.g., meetings, projects, etc.
In Summary
This article has addressed practical ways to promote a good work environment. These include providing facilities that make working more comfortable, fostering open communication, and ensuring employees feel important and heard.
When you have a positive work environment, your employees will be happier, more productive, efficient, creative, and content.
About the Author
Lydia Iseh is a writer with years of experience in writing SEO content that provides value to the reader. As someone who believes in the power of SEO to transform businesses, she enjoys being part of the process that helps websites rank high on search engines. Currently working as a CMO at Assignyourwriter, she is trying to get the company back to the top again.
