During times of crisis, either on a community or global level, it can be helpful for employers to create a fun company culture for their staff. This is especially important as workers navigate the stress and changes brought on by COVID-19.
When your employees know you’ve put effort into making their work experience and corporate training more engaging, they will appreciate it. As a result, you may see an increase in performance and productivity. “Making things fun is important because our financials prove we can't provide a premium service - and charge accordingly - without a happy, motivated workforce,” stated an Entrepreneur.com article called Put People Before Profits.”1 And an exciting company culture can be felt by all employees; even those who work remotely.
Simple tips for making your
workplace more fun for employees
Here are a few ways you can create a company culture your employees will love:
1. Prioritize incentives
To make your company culture more fun, prioritize incentives. Employee incentives drive engagement, which is a marker for how exciting a company’s culture is. “An important piece of the engagement puzzle is incentives,” explained Entrepreneur.com.2 “Incentives matter -- and a good incentives program doesn’t just provide traditional bonuses or commission-based rewards for sales teams that meet their quota. Instead, it should reward and recognize employees from across different departments and levels of responsibility for achieving a variety of work-related goals.”
Many companies have been severely impacted financially by COVID-19, but incentives can be offered no matter how tight money is. For example, a more flexible work schedule, public recognition of achievements, and handwritten thank-you notes cost nothing, yet they would probably mean a lot to most employees. And whenever possible, give top-performing employees gift cards, free lunch, Uber or Lyft credits, extra vacation time, and other monetary incentives. And remember that remote employees need incentives just as much as those who work from the office.
2. Team employees up with people they like
Who were your favorite employers in the past? More than likely they were employers who allowed you to work with peers you genuinely liked and got along well with. Nothing will dampen company culture like forcing those who don’t see eye to eye, to work together. This can cause a lot of stress for employees and even promote turnover in some cases.
A barrier to teaming employees up with people they like is finding out who they want to work with. Some employees won’t be forthcoming about whether or not they prefer the company of certain peers over others. To find out, you’ll need to survey employees using neutral language about who their ideal team would include. Also, have supervisors note which workers have great rapport and rearrange teams as necessary to make company culture more fun for workers. Be sure to apply this principle to remote teams as well as in-person teams.
Related Reading: 3 Reasons eLearning Enriches Company Culture
3. Make training a pleasure
To make company culture more fun, start with making employee training more enjoyable. Training is not always something employees look forward to, but you can change that by ensuring that each employee is being offered training that truly interests them. There will always be mandatory training, such as compliance training, that all workers must participate in whether they like it or not. But beyond that, employees should be trained in topics of personal interest.
To determine what subjects employees would like to be trained in, it’s vital to regularly survey them concerning this. Also, let them know they are free to reach out to their direct supervisor with training ideas and requests, and allow them to be active participants in the creation of their personalized training plan.
In addition to making training content more engaging, you can also increase the fun-factor of the training experience by delivering employee training with a learning management software that is intuitive, user-friendly, and fun to use, such as a learning experience platform (LXP).
Are you looking for an online learning platform that is cost-effective, offers remote training, and that your employees will enjoy using? If so, request an LXP demo to see the TOPYX platform in action. Our Quick Start Program can help your company deploy engaging training in a matter of days.
Sources:
1. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/203074
2. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/295301
