Boost Morale and Strengthen Teamwork: Unleash the Power of Team Building Ideas
Discover a wealth of team building ideas and morale boosters to enhance collaboration, motivation, and engagement in your workplace. From year-end office festivities to supporting remote employees, these strategies will help create a positive work environment and foster strong team dynamics.
Year-End Office Festivities: Fostering Unity and Appreciation
Embrace the holiday spirit and show employee appreciation with 10 exciting ideas for year-end office festivities. Volunteer together or host a holiday meal to promote unity, goodwill, and perspective. These activities enhance engagement and team spirit.
Virtual Ice Cream Social: Connecting Remotely with Sweet Delights
When traditional staff picnics or BBQs aren’t possible, bring your team together with a virtual ice cream social. Provide ice cream certificates redeemable at grocery stores, fostering togetherness and fun.
Supporting Remote Employees: Navigating the Challenges of Remote Work
Effectively engage remote employees by addressing the unique challenges they face. Discover insights and tips for creating a connected and productive remote workforce.
Cultivating Workplace Friendships: Nurturing Connections within Your Organization
Celebrate National Friendship Day by exploring the importance of workplace friendships. In other words, foster meaningful connections that enhance job satisfaction, retention, and collaboration.
Engaging Blue-Collar Workers: Creating a Positive Work Environment
Effectively engage blue-collar workers with tailored strategies. Recognize their contributions, foster pride, and create a cohesive team environment.
In conclusion, unlock your team’s potential with these team building ideas and morale boosters. Above all, from year-end festivities to supporting remote employees and cultivating workplace friendships, enhance collaboration, motivation, and engagement for your organization’s success. In short, implement these strategies to foster a positive work culture and drive team effectiveness.
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Beat the Summer Heat with an Ice Cream Social
Just because school is back in session, doesn’t mean that summer is over! In most of the country, we’re still experiencing heat waves that SCREAM for ice cream! Popsicles, ice cream sandwiches and sundae bars are a fan favorite, no matter how old you are and where you live.
Whether you have a small staff or large teams with remote employees, a hybrid ice cream social is a great way to reward employees and bring smiles to everyone. Let us help you plan one today!
Top 10 Ideas for Year-End Office Festivities
Let the fun commence! Here are 10 ideas for throwing year-end office festivities. This time of year can be stressful, but also full of gratitude, wonder and joy! Set the tone with simple, impactful workplace activities that spread the spirit!Not only do year-end office festivities offer a way to have some fun, but they are a strategic way to show employee appreciation and enhance employee engagement. Be true to your culture — what would be authentic and enjoyable? Tap some creative minds and enjoy the process!
Top 10 Year-End Office Festivities
Volunteer together at a food pantry or host a holiday meal at a shelter. Bring employees together to give back to the community, offering unity, perspective and goodwill to all who participate.
(more…)Supporting Remote Employees Now
Let’s start this blog post with kudos for you for hanging in there during these uncertain and challenging times. That you’re taking the time to click on this post shows your commitment to staying engaging with and supporting your remote employees. So hat’s off to you for remaining curious and committed to bringing out the best in your staff.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a host of challenges to everyone and we are seeing that people are dealing with those challenges in different ways.
Maybe you already had remote employees at your company so your challenge was expanding that scenario to many more employees. Or perhaps you are like many companies who find themselves dealing with a remote workforce for the first time.
(more…)How Companies Cultivate Workplace Friendships
Happy Friendship Day! Photo of Friendship Day celebration display by Ananta Bhadra Lamichhane
As National Friendship Day approaches in August, it’s the perfect time to reflect on how companies can cultivate workplace friendships and why workplace friendships are important.Survey Says…
In an article about workplace friendships for L & D Daily Advisor, writer Lin Grensing-Pophal cites a Gallup Q-12 employee engagement assessment tool which asks the questions, “Do you have a best friend at work?” Why ask that question? Well, research by Gallup indicates that having a best friend in the workplace correlates with higher job satisfaction rates AND a reduction in the likelihood that an employee will depart to find a different job. (more…)
Engaging Remote Workers in 2018: What’s New
Engaging Remote Workers Is Increasingly Necessary
Thanks largely to technology, more and more people — full-time employees, part-timers, and freelancers — are working remotely more and more often. One estimate from 2018 says that 3.9 million Americans now work from home at least half the week, or almost 3 percent of the country’s workforce. That’s great news for many employers and employees — remote working arrangements offer flexibility that can mean a lot to your team, as we’ve noted before. But engaging remote workers also takes some extra thought and effort. As HR Dive noted last year: (more…)Insights into Building Employee Loyalty
Building employee loyalty is worth the time and effort
Loyalty in the workplace looks different now than it did a generation ago. Staying at one job with one employer for your entire working life and retiring with a gold watch is far from today’s norm. While employees are more apt to change jobs after just a few years, creating a workplace where there is mutual respect and trust can bring out the best in all of your employees – from Millennial to Baby Boomers. Even if an employee doesn’t spend many years working for you, maximizing the relationship you have with them through engagement, appreciation and support is paramount to the success of your business.5 Biological Needs That Drive Employee Motivation
What’s the secret to employee motivation? Using extrinsic rewards to turn on intrinsic rewards, according to researcher and author Paul Herr.
What is more essential to drive employee motivation — rewards and recognition, or engagement?
Both, according to employee motivation expert Paul Herr. You don’t have to choose!
Instead, “combine the best of both worlds by extrinsically rewarding managers who become skilled at pressing the motivational ‘buttons’ (of employees)” — in short, using extrinsic rewards to turn on intrinsic rewards.
Herr explores this innovative approach to employee motivation in his recent Incentive Research Foundation paper, “Using Behavioral Economics Insights in Incentives, Rewards and Recognition: The Neuroscience.” You can download the paper here.
If your employees landed a major financial windfall tonight, would they still show up at work tomorrow? (more…)Engaging Blue-Collar Workers: A How-To Guide
Is your company engaging blue-collar workers with a focus on recognition and pride? (Photo via UC Rusal, Flickr)
Engaging blue-collar workers may be one of the biggest engagement challenges facing HR today.
Hourly workers are unhappier than salaried workers in many job aspects, according to recently released Gallup poll data.
A Harvard Business Review analysis concluded, “People working blue-collar jobs report lower levels of overall happiness in every region around the world. This is the case across a variety of labor-intensive industries like construction, mining, manufacturing, transport, farming, fishing and forestry.” (more…)How One Company Does ‘Epic’ Employee Engagement
The software company Epic Systems, located in rural Wisconsin, has a strong employee engagement ethic. (Photo via E. Nekervis, Flickr)
The software company Epic Systems proves you don’t have to be located in Silicon Valley to attract tech talent or have a vibrant culture of “epic” employee engagement.
Epic attracts employees from far and wide to its campus situated amid farm fields outside Madison, WI. The company has mushroomed in recent years and now employs more than 9,000.
Epic has a reputation for good pay, great culture and a quirky, fun-filled campus that provides many on-site amenities to employees.
A rare interview with Epic founder (more…)Give the Workplace Gift Everyone Needs: Flexibility!
The flexibility to work when and where you want is a valued workplace benefit, especially this busy back-to-school time of year.
As summer winds down, the workplace gift employees appreciate most is a flexible schedule!
As people take last-minute summer outings and families prepare kids for the new school years, work/life balance is more important than ever.
Late August is especially challenging for parents and caregivers sending older kids off to college and preparing younger ones to go back to school. There are some responsibilities people just need to take care of during a workday, like meeting their child’s Kindergarten teacher or attending mandatory parent school meetings. A little flexibility this time of year can go a long way to building employee loyalty and morale. It’s a valuable workplace gift indeed – and it’s good for your business, too!
Give Workers the Workplace Gift of Flextime!
Get Healthy With Workplace Wellness Strategies
Photo by Francesco Corallo, Flickr
Workplace wellness benefits not only employees, but your business, too! As the CDC posts in “Wellness at Work,”
“Ideally, the office should be a place that not only protects the safety and well-being of employees but also provides them opportunities for better long-term health.”
It’s an important employee benefit, but it also improves your bottom line. In “8 Ways to Promote Wellness in the Workplace,” Inc. contributor Lauren Lastowka notes:
“Wellness programs are linked to greater productivity, less absenteeism, and a reduction of long-term health care costs.”
How to Engage Manufacturing Workers
Photo via James Wu, Flickr
It’s no secret that it’s essential to engage workers if you want optimum company performance. And who doesn’t? In the next few weeks we’ll look at ways to engage workers across a variety of businesses. Here’s a closer look at how to engage manufacturing workers.
The power of workplace engagement
First, some overall information about employee engagement. Alison M. Konrad, a professor of organizational behavior and the Corus Entertainment Chair in Women in Management at Ivey Business School addresses engaging workers in “Engaging Employees Through High-involvement Work Practices”: