4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

When you say the words “team building” to your employees, you’re most likely met with a chorus of groans. That’s because they are picturing a typical team building outing, complete with trust falls and ice breakers. Research shows that team building exercises can have real, positive effects on employee performance.

Of course, that effect is dependent on what kind of activities you’re asking your employees to do. The key is to find a fun or rewarding activity or destination that incorporates team-building aspects, rather than individual or passive endeavors (think white water rafting rather than go-carting). How do you get the benefits of a team building outing without drawing the ire of your team? Here are three outing ideas for Midwest team building.

1. Tick Tock Escape Games

With the arrival of fall, everyone is getting excited for the upcoming holidays. This can be a tricky topic in the workplace because you have to be cognizant and respectful of everyone's traditions and beliefs. If everyone in your office wants to participate in a fun winter gift exchange, you now have the difficult choice between two traditions. Should you do white elephant or Secret Santa? 

White Elephant Pros 

White elephant is fun, silly and light-hearted. It is the perfect option for small offices that don't take the holidays or gift giving too seriously. If everyone has a good sense of humor, you can find some really funny products that can be used around the office for some team bonding even after the holidays are done. You also get to know your co-workers sense of humor and taste with these fun gifts.

 Talk to any business executive and you're likely to hear their core focus is on revenue and growth. But what about for everyday employees? While their day-to-day work is focused on meeting these executive-level goals, they very likely get out of bed each morning and are excited about their job for different reasons.

 Indeed, job satisfaction goes well beyond achieving overall company success. In particular, the daily grind can stress out anyone as well as put ongoing wear and tear on employees' health, morale and productivity. But it doesn't have to be that way. Here are five ways you can help re-energize your employees so they keep performing at their best. 

1. Fitness Challenges 

Only in your wildest dreams would you have thought that offices would be full of bean bag chairs, ping pong tables and nap pods. Work spaces have been changing drastically in the last several years to catch up with the millennial lifestyle and technology. While some of these changes may be just the current trends, others look like they're here to stay. Let's take a closer look at what your office may look like in the next decade:

Flexible Work Spaces 

Flexibility, agility and collaboration are some of the most important skills businesses have in the current marketplace. This means you need your work space to be just as accommodating. There is a lot of debate about open office spaces and if they promote or hinder employee efficiency. Open spaces are great for collaboration and team building, but they also can be distracting and noisy. The office of the future will have both open and closed working spaces where employees can work where they're most comfortable. Offices will have different types of rooms that adapt to the work being done instead of being rigid. You will not see boxy meeting rooms with one white board and some chairs, but rather spaces with a variety of materials, room to move around and even secluded spaces where people can get away to focus.

People around the world report that they feel stressed up to 80% of their time, with the number one cause being attributed to job-related reasons. Stress doesn’t only affect efficiency and concentration. In the long-term, it can impact a person’s physical and mental health, and that’s not to mention the damage absenteeism can do to business productivity.

So, it’s of little wonder that companies like Sage are offering guided mindfulness courses to help employees take some time to meditate at work. As companies realise the dangers stress can pose to business and employees, it’s worth implementing ways to reduce it and make work a more relaxing place to be. 

Meditation
Mindfulness is a specific type of meditation where you become aware of your thoughts and how the environment and people around you are affecting you. It can be hard to see what’s really bothering us in the heat of the moment, but finding a quiet place (or plugging in your noise-cancelling headphones) and taking some time to control your breathing and focus your mind can give you a perspective unlike any other.
Meditation has been proven to not only improve your problem-solving, multi-tasking, and creativity, but has even been shown to boost your immune system.

Reports show that by 2020 millennials will make up a third of the global workforce.
Instant Offices take a look in to what members of this digital generation really look for in a career.

The ManpowerGroup, whose job is to find work for 3.4 million people, about half of whom are millennials, surveyed the careers and working environments of 19,000 millennials to find out. The report aimed to find out how different they are from the rest of the workforce, which development opportunities they are motivated by, and why they choose to stay with employers.
The nature of millennials: They exist in a fast-paced world, and their work expectations aren’t much different – they want a career that offers variety and quick progression.

Millennials are positive about their careers.

Despite the role technology has played in disrupting business, corporate structure as we know it today isn't going anywhere. Now, it's no secret businesses that are able to scale operations and develop teams whose employees work more efficiently are better able to focus on tasks, and thereby create better synergy and output. 

Too much structure, however, and these efficient teams become silos, a term for departments that, like a mischievous kindergartner, don't like to share. Ultimately, this lack of collaboration leads to a lack of transparency. What's the point of sharing information company-wide if workplace teams are only concerned with their own department's goals? It's hard to quantify how much damage this situation causes. 

But Buffer, a social media management platform, demonstrated an actual business benefit of transparency. Specifically, Buffer posted the salaries of its entire staff, including the CEO, on its company blog — and the decision paid off handsomely: In the days following the announcement, Buffer received close to 3,000 job applications, a 229 percent increase from the 30 days before publishing the blog post. 

Is your company looking for ways to create better efficiency and harmony? Here are three tips that will help your leaders and decision-makers improve cross-departmental relationships.

 Perfecting the hiring process is about more than merely finding the right candidate — it should also be about saving valuable time and money for your company. According to research from Bersin by Deloitte, the cost to fill an open position has ballooned to $4,000 per employee — and nearly three-times that amount to train them. Talk about hiring right the first time!

Additionally, recruiters are bemoaning the fact that the time to find the right hire is increasing, too. While there may be no way around getting company decision-makers on board at the same time, there are steps you can take to enhance your hiring process and find the right candidates. Here’s how:

When we focus on methods by which to improve employee engagement levels, and how to boost productivity, we tend to think about performance management processes such as regular performance discussions and clear personal development objectives. We might also consider benefits such as flexibility and casual dress codes.

All of these elements are critical considerations, but what you might not know is that the physical office environment is just as important when it comes to improving employee performance.

Below are just a few ways in which the space around you — from lighting to temperature — can seriously influence the way you work.

Good lighting can make all the difference

A study conducted by the American Society of Interior Design found that 68% of employees complain about the lighting in their offices. This is something we should be paying far more attention to, considering our sensitivity towards light and the impact it can have on our moods and behaviors.

When you take an employee survey the expectation is that something is going to change and it will be for the better. But what if the changes don’t stick or just fail to make any real difference for employees? If senior management did not respond the first time, the survey won’t have much credibility if it runs a second time. But a second chance still matters because it is one more valuable chance to get employee voices heard so it is critical employees don’t blow it off.

Reasons employees will blow off a survey are varied. In our experience the most common reason is employees are worried they will rock the boat or there will be consequences if a manager finds out what their employee said about them. Fear exists in some workplaces so it is important that employee surveys - at least the data collection part - be managed by an independent third party. We know that there are plenty of "free" or low cost survey tools available that you can use to collect employee data internally. However, protecting employee anonymity - both in reality and in the eyes of your employees - is absolutely essential if you want to achieve the highest possible participation and if you're determined to get honest and reliable answers. Read how we guarantee anonymity here and why we believe it is a vital part of employee research.

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