9 min read 7 Characteristics of a Positive and Productive Workplace Environment
Often, as a business owner, CEO, or expert, you'll always be on the lookout for new techniques to enable maximum productivity at your organization, right?
For example, how your organization can grow a strong foundation and operate efficiently to achieve goals faster.
Fortunately, positive work culture can make things easier. However, how do you cultivate it? How does an ideal workplace environment function and look like, and how can you contribute towards it? Here, we explore seven characteristics synonymous with a positive and productive workplace environment.
But first:
What qualities make a company a great place to work?
For starters, these are the characteristics that make an organization appealing to its workers. For instance, the level of pride the employees have in their jobs. The amount of trust they have in their leaders and the extent they enjoy working together.
That said; here are the aforementioned attributes:
1. Positive Values
Undoubtedly, implementing positive values in your business can unite everyone irrespective of their positions to realize common bigger purposes or goals. In essence, they constitute a vital component for developing a thriving, stable, and motivating work environment.
You may ask why?
Well, they create purpose, which is undeniably essential for employee satisfaction.
As a matter of fact, 73% of employees who know what they want find satisfaction in their jobs. On the other hand, 64% who don't have a purpose find their duties unsatisfying.
Therefore, to integrate positive values in your organization, you need to start at the foundational level going upwards. As an example, begin with a mission statement that showcases your positive core values and demands the same from the employees.
Doing so sets your organization's tempo, culture, perspective, modus operandi, and purpose.
Consider Google's mission and values—"organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Alternatively, Amazon's mission and values-- "Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking."
The above mission statements have enabled the companies to dominate their markets since they have become familiar with their workplace culture. And positive core values from the word go.
Apart from that, you need to create a code of conduct to control and shape your employee's behavior. No one should be above the agreed regulations; those found guilty of disobeying them should face the necessary disciplinary action to encourage compliance.
Tools such as time management software come in handy when enforcing particular rules concerning employee timeliness. And other organizational duties such as creating accurate timesheets and enabling instant payroll.
Lastly, as a rule of thumb, adhere to the commonly known ethical practices. That is, maintain integrity, honesty, and fairness, among others, at all levels to inspire positivity. In a nutshell, your abode needs to be a great place to work to start with for any meaningful productivity.
2. Open Lines of Communication
Certainly, you'll agree with us that gagging up your employees would not only create resentment among them but also cause confusion regarding how things should run.
On the other hand, allowing free communication makes them feel heard and valued and, as a result, feel satisfied with their duties.
Diversity in the workplace also results from open line communication within your business since employees with different knowledge bases can freely interact to bring about new perspectives.
To enable open communication, you can practice several things. First, you can allow feedback from your employees by asking them to provide their views regarding particular organizational decisions or moves.
These can enable business growth since the employees are your foot soldiers. Thus, they are in the know-how regarding the realities on the ground, which makes their contribution worthwhile.
Not to forget, allow them to positively criticize whenever they feel a particular action or pronouncement is lousy. And let them know that they are allowed to do so by reacting positively and encouragingly. For instance, avoid acting in an intimidating manner or becoming upset, reacting defensively to constructive criticism, as it can push your employees away.
Doing so would make your employees feel included in decision-making.
Either way, if an employee's suggestion doesn't hold water, you don't have to implement it. Just make sure that they feel their contribution is welcomed and explain your choice.
Some of the ways you can get feedback from your employees include developing a feedback mechanism such as an anonymous hotline that allows them to air their views or a suggestion box to drop their suggestions. Furthermore, you can set up face to face meetings with the workers and encourage them to provide feedback regarding how the organization is being run.
Another way to ensure open communication is to make it transparent. As such, desist from lying or using information to manipulate your employees as it creates insincerity and bad taste within the workplace.
Note that your workers are always sensitive; therefore, would notice if you're withholding information or deceiving them. As such, try to be honest as much as possible when interacting with your employees to create trust and a positive environment around the workplace.
3. A Fun and Productive Atmosphere
Without saying, a great workplace environment constitutes one in which every employee has fun and enjoys their work. Without which, they would dread coming to work, as well as drag their feet all day waiting for closure time. Meaning, they would perform their bare minimum and lack the motivation to fully exploit their skillsets for maximum performance.
Besides, a workplace hostile environment brings about fear, stress, and negativity among the employees, which slows down productivity.
Nevertheless, if you develop a fun and productive workplace atmosphere, most employees will be happy with their jobs and become excited about being part of the work culture.
A happier workforce will often exceed expectations leading to better outcomes. Besides, it would stick around for long since most of the members will be happy with their jobs.
This eliminates the need to continually replace your workers, which keeps your projects moving at a consistent and productive pace.
4. A Focus on Training
Equipping your employees with current knowledge regarding your organization's specialization area will often put them ahead of the pack.
Such an undertaking can be considered as reinvestment in your employees. This makes them conversant with the latest technology and tools giving them a competitive edge in the current world.
Training and development opportunities also reward your employees for the work done, which makes them feel honored and more valued. Consequently, they would feel more motivated to provide their best work, as well as stay for long within your organization.
Similarly, you can create individual improvement plans for each worker regarding their skills and career goals. This is important, as it would encourage them to perform excellently to achieve positive work environment benefits—for instance, better productivity.
5. Positive Leadership
Your organization, just like any other out there, has some form of hierarchy--from the CEO and executive level management to the entry-level workers and interns. And everyone knows their immediate boss or whom to report to.
However, if this hierarchy is dictatorial or overly assertive, those on the lower end might feel oppressed, leading to negative feelings about the organization, which can drastically impact output.
Thus to keep your workers productive, you need to encourage positive leadership in your business.
Good leaders set the pace by providing positive examples. For instance, using the correct and suitable leadership styles depending on a situation and avoiding engaging in activities or practices against the organization's core values.
Besides, leaders need to foster a positive work culture that encourages creativity, open communication lines, collaboration, and happiness to make their employees more interested in their work to boost productivity.
And by all means, leaders should avoid creating an unhealthy workplace environment that can negatively impact the employees leading to dismal performance.
6. Teamwork
In a workplace environment that encourages teamwork, workers will often feel motivated to know their colleagues; thus, allowing a comfortable and easy sharing of opinions, tips, and ideas.
Teamwork also plays a significant part in developing a collaborative work environment critical for improved productivity. For example, when every employee is working alongside others to solve issues, your organization becomes more effective and will often excel at getting things done faster.
As a result, a positive environment would be created since the employees would be grateful for having each other and working together.
In the same vein, developing teamwork within your company makes employees feel supported and are not alone in achieving organizational goals. This eliminates workplace environment issues such as the feeling of being overwhelmed by some of your workers regarding their duties.
Not only that, but an exemplary teamwork spirit also ensures a smooth running of activities in the right direction.
To develop teamwork and collaboration at your organization, you need to:
- Positively deal with change: ensure that your workforce embraces change in a positive way by pulling off all the negative feelings that come with it
- Provide each team member with clear roles: This enables clear expectations and collaboration between participants
- Utilize project management tools: Online project management tools can help track teams and projects, as well as allow flexible working routines from the beginning of an idea up to its end
- Celebrate individuality: This allows identifying individual behaviors allowing the most productive approaches to boost teamwork, engagement, and employee retention
7. A Work-Life Balance
As the adage goes, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," so is the reality at your workplace. Holding your workers' hours on end doesn't make them more productive. Instead, it reduces their effectiveness and efficiency significantly, which increases their turnover rate and absenteeism.
On the contrary, a healthy work-life balance enables productivity at your place. This is informed by the fact that your employees will not be worried about their personal lives as they can have sufficient time to attend to their private lives. For instance, have significant time with their better halves and young ones, as well as engage in their hobbies and exercises.
Ideally, you can engage your workers for thirty to fifty hours a week to allow them to take care of other life obligations.
Other ways of creating a work-life balance at your organization include:
- Providing remote and flexible working: most employees want to be trusted regarding how they manage how, where, and when they work
- Encouraging your company managers to prioritize productivity instead of hours: This stems from the fact that completing particular tasks is more important than counting the number of hours your employees work.
- Encouraging breaks: allow your workers to take a walk, break, or change offices since the workplace environment can sometimes be overwhelming
- Reviewing your employees' workloads regularly: having a regular talk with your workers enables you to determine who has the capacity and who is busy and stressed; a review of their duty allocations ensures achievable workloads
- Leading by example: make sure that your top leaders and managers also showcase a healthy work-life balance
- Providing room for volunteering: This allows employees to feel good about their work and themselves.
- Reconsidering time off: offering your workers time off can prevent burnout
- Improving support for parents: Ensure the dads and mums in your company are provided with a better work-life balance to prevent them from exiting and losing out on precious expertise
- Providing health cash plans: health cash plans reassure employees that they have a fall back plan if their family becomes sick. Besides, it motivates a more pro-active point of view regarding inoculations and health check-us, reducing staff absences
- Acknowledging that every worker is different: Try as much as possible to personalize each employee's workplace experience
- Including several perks in your contract: Additional services such as free fitness lessons and reduced gym membership subscription fee, free massage, and discounted dry cleaning services can save your employees money and time and reduce their stress
Conclusion
In a wrap, the various pros and cons of the work environment dramatically contribute to an organization's underlying workplace culture. However, the above-mentioned characteristics contribute towards a positive and productive workplace environment. Therefore, it would be wise to incorporate them into your organization.
