Author: Asam

All work and no play — that’s no fun. 

While we agree that work is serious and doing a good job is important, we believe that doesn’t mean that it has to be void of fun. 

Fun means different things to different people. Choosing a job you enjoy is part of the equation to finding fun in the everyday at work. That said, every job has its high and low points and most aren’t fun all of the time.

Here are a few unexpected ways to have fun at work, regardless of what you do:

Dress for happiness
What you choose to wear affects your mood. Choose clothes that make you feel confident, upbeat, and positive. For many people, this means choosing bright colours and patterns. Do what works for you and try mixing it up and take note of your change in mood.

Share in each other’s successes
Publicly recognizing teammates for a job well done creates a more light-hearted and supportive environment that makes being at work more fun. Outside of recognizing professional achievements, celebrating milestones like work anniversaries or birthdays is another great way to bolster happiness around the office.

Host team-building events
Bringing people together for non-work-related activities is a great way to break up the routine, help coworkers get to know each other better, and to de-stress. It’s also a great way to build a better corporate culture, something that directly impacts your business’ bottom line.

For a few ideas on what to try, check out our blog ‘3 fun virtual team-building activities for your workforce.’

Birthdays. Like them or not, they keep coming back year after year. While some people choose to forgo birthday celebrations when their special day rolls around, others relish in the fanfare and extra attention. 

In the workplace, birthdays are often overlooked, or not fairly recognized across teams. While that may not seem like a big deal — we are all adults after all — there are benefits to recognizing the day for every employee. 

Saying ‘Happy Birthday’ — the benefits:

It’s a chance to recognize someone for more than just being an employee
Whether we realize it or not, we all like to feel seen, recognized, and appreciated. While recognition should happen often — like when someone does a good job at work — there are other opportunities to acknowledge your team members or coworkers and to make them feel appreciated. Their birthday is a perfect time to do just that. It’s a day that’s just for them and it’s a chance to thank them simply for being who they are (not just for being an employee).

It offers stress relief
Rituals, such as celebrating a birthday, helps to break away from a stressful routine. It’s a chance for individuals to accept and receive positive attention and affirmation from their friends, family, coworkers, and boss. 

It helps to further employee engagement

It’s important to recognize birthdays because employees spend the majority of their waking lives at work. As a people leader, or as an organization, it’s important to use birthdays as an opportunity to show your genuine appreciation for the hard work your employees do each day. Doing so has the potential to increase an employee’s sense of value within the organization, pride in what they do, and overall engagement in their work and with their team — all key factors in nurturing better performance. 

Most of us are still working remotely, physically disconnected from our direct reports and peers. For many employees, the only contact they have with their colleagues is via Zoom or similar digital platform, and it’s almost certainly always shop-talk.

So how does an organization ensure that an effort is still made to encourage camaraderie and shared downtime among its employees?

Benefits of team-building activities:

• Employees and managers get a chance to know each other as individuals outside of their roles at work
• Stress relief
• A more engaged workforce
• Greater collaboration 
• Improved productivity

Here are 5 activities to bring your teams together socially to encourage engagement and better teamwork:

1. Escape room
   This group activity was popular pre-pandemic and has seen a resurgence recently. You can now engage a vendor to facilitate a virtual escape room experience for your team.
   
   What to expect: They’ll have someone on-site walking through the escape room, taking directions from your team as they seek to uncover clues and escape the room before time runs out.

    

2. Virtual wine or beer tasting  
   If your corporate culture allows for the occasional drink during office hours, this may be for you. Since drinking is inherently a social activity, this type of activity offers teams a chance to socialize and get to know each other better — all while learning more about the finer points of wine and/or beer tasting. 

As a people leader, you may feel as though you have big shoes to fill. Your team looks to you for answers, direction, encouragement, and for big ideas to inspire and engage them. At the same time, the senior leadership team looks to you for big results. While at times this may make you feel larger than life, it’s also a lot of weight for any one person to carry. 

What if you looked at leadership a little differently? If you break it down, leadership is what you do each day — the culmination of the micro and macro moments and actions you take. So when you approach leadership from this point of view, it becomes much more manageable and far less daunting.

These are the kinds of small actions that add up to big wins:

Offering encouragement 

When you see an employee doing great work, you pause to recognize and celebrate it. 

Providing teachable moments
When you see an employee struggling with a task, you seek to understand how you can help. Not to do the task for them, but to teach them the skill set they need to be successful and self-sufficient. 

People don’t leave companies, they leave managers. It’s more than just a saying, it’s a fact. People leave companies all the time due to poor management, a lack of leadership, or bad relations with their boss.  

While that tends to paint people leaders in a bad light, most managers strive to be good leaders who inspire and unite their teams to help the organization thrive. 

Before we outline the to-dos that make a great manager, it’s important to pause to acknowledge what doesn’t work:

• Playing favourites
• Losing your temper or being emotionally unpredictable 
• Harshly criticizing team members in front of their peers
• Sarcasm or degrading comments
• Pressure to work long hours

Those are just a few of the toxic practices of bad bosses. Now, here are some tips for managers who truly want to do better in order to motivate their teams:

Communicate
Let the team know your style of management, expectations, your intentions, what they can expect from you, and so on. Setting the stage and providing a consistent experience will help your subordinates understand how to interact with you.

State goals and objectives
Outline what the team is working towards and your plan to help them reach the stated goals. With a collective North Star to work towards, everyone on the team will know what direction they’re going and will understand the importance of their contributions. 

After the difficult year we had, one word has become somewhat of a mantra for workforce managers and human resources professionals — resiliency. 

What is resilience?
Based on the dictionary definition, the noun resilience/resiliency means:

1. The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness
2. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity

What does it have to do with people?
When met with adversity or a change in the workplace, people experience varied degrees of resiliency. Some will embrace the challenge to adapt, adjust, and recover; while others will feel stuck, apprehensive, and incapable of adapting. 

Resiliency in 2021
After a year of massive change in the way we work, resilience has become a hot topic among HR leaders and workforce management professionals. Employers are increasingly concerned about their teams’ ability to adapt to the changing work landscape, and their aptitude to remain committed to the organization through uncertain times. 

It’s something that has been on the minds of employees too. More than ever, they’re feeling the effects of economic and social unrest. Many found themselves furloughed due to downturns in the market, while a larger number of others were suddenly thrust into a remote work scenario — something that was new to most of them. All of these factors contribute to a stressful situation for both employee and employer. 

How to build resiliency among employees

Ideally, building resilience is something that begins before a disruptive event or situation occurs. However, it is never too late to act to support employees which in turn supports the organization. 

Workforce management is a process that maximizes employee productivity and performance levels which results in improved competency and output for an organization.

How it works
At a high-level, workforce management encompasses a few key functions, including:

• Real-time data collection
• Recruiting
• Training
• Field service management
• Human resources management
• Performance management
• Budgeting
• Forecasting
• Scheduling
• Analyzing and actioning on analytics

Human resources management refers to the professional business relationship between people and their employers. 

By definition, human resource management is the strategic approach used in the effective management of people within a company or organization to help the business gain a competitive advantage. 

Human resource management is designed to maximize employee productivity and performance in service of their employer’s strategic business objectives.

As an organization’s most valuable resource, employees are highly regarded. Their contributions to the business support its success — something that every business owner understands. 

To nurture and accelerate their performance, and to improve business outcomes, human resources management solutions are utilized. These strategies help organizations manage their people topimally and for mutual benefit.

At The West Egg Group, we understand the needs of both the employee and employer. As experts in workforce management solutions, we can develop a human resources plan that supports prescribed business objectives. If human resource management is something your organization has been struggling with, or if you’re interested in leveraging new processes and perspectives, contact us.

An engaged workforce is happier, more efficient, and highly productive. As such, ensuring that your people are enjoying their work and feel valued is of the utmost importance. 

At The West Egg Group, we respect the hard work and dedication of our team members. We understand that our collective success is built upon three distinct core values that shape what we do, how we set ourselves apart, and how we lead, each and every day:

Above & beyond

• Exceeds the expected
• Dependable
• Willing to sacrifice
• Hustles

Ownership

• Accountable
• No excuses
• Solutions focused
  
  

Professionalism 

• How you act
• How you show up
• Your mindset
  
  

We believe that by laddering back to these core values in all that we do, we will be successful for ourselves, our organization, our clients, and our guests.