Creating a Positive Work Atmosphere

This post is for Negative Nancy. On an earlier post Nancy asked about keeping her employees positive while she is out of the office. Anonymous had some great advice for her. Here are some more tips.

There are so many reasons to maintain a positive workplace; happy people are more productive, happy people want to stay in your employ reducing your turnover, and customers want to interact with happy people. Surveys show that if your workforce is not happy, your customers won’t be either.

How do you maintain a positive workforce? First, you have to hire positive people (see post, Hire for Attitude Train for Skill). Next, you have to keep those positive people happy by compensating them appropriately and treating them well.

However, even when you have those two essentials down, a busy office can stress-out the best of us from time to time. Here are some helpful tips to maintain that up-beat positive workplace even when things are stressful.

1. Watch your own behavior. As a business owner or manager, it is easy to get tired and overwhelmed. Be sure that you are not the “Negative Nancy” of the office. If you find yourself mumbling "TGIF" or "I hate Mondays", purchase a copy of "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman, you will love it. Then pass it on to your employees.

2. Start a Recognition Program that rewards the positive behaviors in your office. Have fun with it. I created such a program for one of my clients which we called “Getting Caught in the ACT”, standing for Achievement, Character, and Teamwork. The idea was to catch someone in the act of doing something good, and than rewarding them. In this program the rewards did not cost more than $25, a small price to pay to make someone feel appreciated. The point is to have fun with it and reward those qualities that make your workplace a great place to be.

3. Do a Culture Walk-Through. Walk into your offices as though you have never been there before…see it through the eyes of a new customer or employee. What do you hear? What do you see? Is their chaos and clutter? Are the pictures on the walls upbeat and motivational? You will be surprised by what you find and how a few small changes could boost morale.

4. Stay upbeat with some tunes. Upbeat music helps to lift spirits. Challenge the staff to develop the "Happiest" of happy music cd’s, a collection of tunes that will keep people smiling and whistling while they work. They will love to hear their creation played in the office.

5. Have an Open Door Policy. You may think that you don’t have the time to listen to every employees concerns, venting, or ideas. But trust me; you don’t have the time not to. If an employee can not talk to you about an issue (and get it resolved) they will be talking to others about it or brooding over it for days. Nip it in the bud, let them vent it directly to you so they can move on to a more productive activity.

Remember, People Wise offers many services to the Kansas City Small Business including Team Builders, Conflict Resolution and Customer Service Training, and help with difficult employee situations. We are here to help www.pwhrm.com