Despite what many TV shows and films may have lead us to believe, life in an office isn’t always full of laughs and exciting drama. The majority of your days will be filled with filing, shredding, meetings about meetings and feigning interest when Susan from accounts tells you about her weekend.
We can all get bogged down in our day to day tasks, and sometimes we need something NEW to shake us up from stagnating and becoming distracted from the hard work we need to do. If you’re a Boss looking to try and inject a new lease of life into your team then here is a way to get them working even harder: Tell them to Do Less Work. Now we’re not saying tools down and stop working altogether, but by breaking up the monotony and injecting some fun into the office environment can go a long way to motivate your team. Motivated happy employees are more productive than bored disengaged ones!
Here at Searchability we have been hosting our own Rio Olympics: Searchabrazility – kicking off with an Olympics themed party, with daily PlayStation tournaments plus mini recruitment targets in which employees have the chance to win a night away for them and a friend / partner. We’ve only been running this for around a week so far and have already seen fantastic results – our employee’s are happier, we are performing better on our daily KPI’s and people seem to be less stressed (which in recruitment is pretty astonishing). It’s a great way to get the team to come together with a daily draw for the PlayStation tournament; it creates excitement and allows people to get a break from their desk. Each game literally takes no more than 5 minutes so it doesn’t affect the amount of work people do (if anything the office buzz surrounding the event is energising people even more).
As with most businesses, recruitment is an industry where we are always pushing for more from our employees – higher targets, more KPI’s, more hours… so to think we can get more just by making office life a bit more fun then why wouldn’t we try it? Want to join in? Here are a few ideas to start having more fun to get more results from your employees:
Computer Games
In keeping with our ‘Searchabrazility’ theme we opted for an Olympics PlayStation game tournament for our employees – but you could choose anything! Draw numbers in the morning to create your tournament fixtures and hold knockout rounds until you have a winner for each day!
Work Anniversaries
Anyone who has worked in an office will know that birthdays can get a bit out of hand – especially in an industry renowned for a higher turnover of staff! Instead of celebrating birthday’s why not mark work anniversaries! Get a cake, some drinks and decorate the desk of the employee on their 1, 2, 3 (you get it) year work anniversary? Plus this is a great way to thank loyal employees!
Themed lunches
Lunchtimes in offices are often spent alone at our desks, scrawling through emails and basically not having a real break from work. We’re all guilty of it! So why not get the team together once a month for a themed lunch – you could choose a different country every time, get a suitable playlist on and even play some games – piñata anyone??
Happy Hour
Nothing says happy Friday like a beer at your desk, so why not tools down for the last hour at the end of the week and enjoy your favourite tipple and a bit of team bonding!
Bake Off
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the TV Show ‘The Great British Bake Off’ – so why not host ‘The Great *Insert company name here* Bake Off’??? It may not be original but you WILL get some tasty treats every week to enjoy – plus you can make it a competition (although if any of my colleagues are reading I expect no less than 10/10 for my profiteroles!
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Get an Office Dog
This is one I have been personally petitioning for being a bit of a crazy dog lady, but studies show that having a pet in the office can actually reduce employee stress! WHO AM I TO ARGUE WITH SCIENCE???
Get charitable
What better way to feel better than to give something back to others – especially if there’s a charity to close to you or your employees hearts? It could be something like a mountain climb, or a Tough Mudder challenge – something that will bring the team together AND make you feel good for giving back.
Does your company have fun events to motivate the team? Let us know what today by commenting or Tweeting us at @SearchabilityUK.
