There are some very real benefits to having your workforce work as a team and enjoy the time that they spend in the office or site. Although you may very well feel that this is very much a one-sided benefit system, you could be surprised to discover just how much your business will benefit as well.
It is a fact that a happy workforce will be considerably more productive than an unhappy one, quality also is known to improve as well as employee retention numbers. This means that your business will very probably benefit financially, and you will get to keep your employees that you have invested extra time in, due to training them or paying to get them qualified in new areas.
However, even armed with this knowledge, there are very few businesses that can honestly say they have a workforce that is happy and works well together – or are willing to do anything to try and achieve this. Getting your workforce to a point where they are all happy and working as a team (rather than some of them trying to prove that they are better than everyone else) is a struggle and requires some effort on your part. Luckily, there are some ways in which you can encourage collaboration rather than competition among your workers.
#1 Organize Team-Building Days
You can quite easily nowadays organize team-building events. It is likely that these events will be held outside working hours and will therefore be voluntary for your workforce to attend – unless, of course, you can make them within your working hours and pay your employees to attend. Although some team-building exercises can be fun, they have a less-than-stellar reputation and can be seen as mundane to some workers. These workers are not likely to attend unless they have to and may even make other workers think twice before putting their names forward.
#2 Hold Meetings With Your Entire Workforce
Never underestimate the power of holding face-to-face meetings with your workers, especially when addressing your whole workforce. Meetings held in this way should cover general issues, such as order book forecasts, what is coming over the next few days or weeks (depending on how often these meetings are held), and any issues that have arisen since the last meeting.
In a properly structured meeting, you always provide enough time at the end for questions and answers and never make your workers feel that you are in a rush to get away from them. These meetings will be best served at least once a month to keep a close connection with your workforce.
Something as simple as this is likely to make everyone in your employ feel like they are valued members of the team and that they are important to the running of the business, as they do not feel left out of the loop and in the dark.
#3 Put on Social Events for All to Enjoy
By putting on social events that everyone can enjoy you will be encouraging your employees to get to know each other outside work. These get-togethers should not be put off to only once a year in the festive season but should be held regularly twice a year at least or ideally quarterly. A dinner dance during the festive season can be quite traditional but is not for everyone; however, a BBQ in the summer season (and possibly spring and fall) is more likely to be welcome to everyone.
It will provide workers with the opportunity to socialize without any work-based tension. If you feel that you would want to vary the social event, then booking at different venues which influence your social gathering could be a good idea. For instance, holding your social gathering at a space venue like https://www.discoverspace.org/events/book-the-space/ could open up different conversations among your workers.
Once you feel that you know your workers well, you could introduce a fancy dress element to the gathering that is associated with the host venue. A space-themed venue could open the doors for space fancy costumes such as Star Trek, Star Wars, or other popular movies.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of what you decide to do to get your workforce talking to each other and working together, you should also make sure that you take the time to thank them for all of their hard work and commitment to your business. Making your workers feel valued is a particularly big step in the route to a happy workforce, and it can so easily be done, but it does have to come straight from the top and not just from the managers that your workforce sees every day.
