Creating a Fun and Inviting Work Environment

By Danielle Wirsansky on October 4, 2017

Having a job is a necessary part of life. You have to have money to live, but you have to work to make money.

But as an employer, you can make the jobs you offer less of a drudge by creating a fun and inviting work environment. Doing so is not only a boon to your employees but can benefit your business as well. Employees who enjoy their jobs and work environments are more likely to stay at their jobs, meaning you will have less employee turnover.

And happy employees also work more productively, which can only be a positive. So now that you have decided to have (or create) a more fun and inviting work environment, how do you do it? Read on for some tips on making your work environment the best it can be.

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Private Employee Spaces

A great way to recognize the work that your employees do is to be sure to provide them with a private space that is just for employees. That way, they can have their own sphere where they can relax and perhaps shed their customer service persona and be themselves. This is not to say that the space is a place where they can just behave willy-nilly. But working with customers all day requires a certain kind of respectful persona that can be taxing to keep up for the long hours of the workday. Even if your employees are not working face to face with employees, they often are via phone or other online communications.

Even if your employee never deals with a customer, it is still a good idea to keep separate spheres for breaks and work. Separating the two spheres will help to make employees more productive when in their workspaces because they will be able to fully relax on their breaks when they are able to completely disengage from their work in separate spheres.

This space could be a separate room for employees to break in or even a couch that they sit on that is away from their desks. There just needs to be a separation from work and relaxation.

Recognize Special Occasions

Another awesome way to make your employee’s work environment more fun and inviting is to recognize special occasions, like successes, holidays, and birthdays! You might not be able to catch every holiday and you do not want to exclude some people from a holiday that they might not celebrate so it might be best to begin by focusing on the holidays that a majority of people will celebrate, like New Years, the 4th of July, and Thanksgiving. Do not let the holidays go by unannounced. Allow your business to get into the holiday spirit too so that your employees can have a sense of joy and excitement when they work. You do not have to do something too big, but recognition of the event itself can often be enough.

Recognizing things like birthdays, which every person has, can also be really morale boosting. Most people still have to go to work on their birthday, so recognizing them and showing that you value their work and the contributions they have made on their birthday can mean a great deal to them. And if they have a milestone event in their life, like an engagement, a wedding, a birth in the family — these are all things that can be recognized as well.

Doing so shows that you have interest in an employee’s life and that they matter to their employer. Having celebrations and highlighting people’s achievements make an environment infinitely more fun and inviting.

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Open Door Policy

Making your work environment fun and inviting does not have to be a difficult process, and another step you can take is to create a sort of open door policy. You do not want employees to feel like they cannot be open or even speak up in your presence. A good employer knows what is going on with his employees so that they can have the most productive business possible.

You do not need to interrogate your employees and you do not need to know overmuch about their lives to a point that it feels like too much information. But your employees should feel comfortable enough to let you know what’s going on in their lives. Keep an open-door policy where if an employee has a concern or just needs to talk to you about something, they feel like they can and they do not feel like they have no options in order to communicate with you.

Without opportunities to communicate, an employee can feel cut off and disconnected, even isolated or alienated. When something comes up, you want them to be able to tell you right away. The quicker you learn something, the more time you have to react or deal with it.

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