[Advertorial] Improving workplace morale and productivity is at the forefront of priorities for many managers and company leaders heading into 2022. When you look at improving productivity and morale during the in-office world, you would consider ping pong tables, free food, in-office options for doctors, etc. It was about making it easier to enjoy being at the office and working. None of those methods work today, though. As hybrid and remote work remains the default model, new approaches to improve productivity and morale must be considered.
Improve morale by taking time off the laptop
The world of remote work has created an environment where people feel like they must be sitting in front of a computer for 8-10 hours a day. The truth is that 8-10 hours in front of a laptop at work is way more time than in the office. There is a lot of wasted idle time in the office that went unnoticed. Most people are not genuinely working for 8-10 hours a day. Instead, there was time spent chatting in the break room, eating lunch (very few people take an actual lunch break with remote work), and doing things other than working.
If your entire team is remote, you need to give them the freedom to walk away from the phone, the laptop, and the tablet. Tell them to disconnect, don’t check email on the weekend or after hours, and encourage them to live their life away from work. For example, if your team has had a particularly difficult week, tell them to stop working at noon on Friday. In a world full of stressors, time away from work is the best medicine.
Look for ways to streamline and improve their home life
If you’ve decided to stick with remote work, you’re likely looking at letting go of your commercial real estate, you’re eliminating a large expense off your books each year. Besides the rent/lease cost, consider the utilities as well. How can you repurpose that expense to help make your employee’s life better and improve productivity and morale in the process?
- Gym stipend
- Weekly lunch stipend
- Home internet/cell phone stipend
- Cleaning stipend
I’ve listed four items here, so I want to break them down. First, a wellness stipend will help employees improve their overall wellness. This stipend could go towards a gym membership, yoga classes, running clubs, etc. A healthy employee is a happy and productive employee. Encourage your team to take time for health by joining a local gym to work out, lift weights, and do cardio. Improving physical fitness is the number one way that employees can stay healthy.
If you were in the routine of treating employees to lunch when in the office, continue that tradition at home. Let employees expense a meal a week and encourage your team to connect over a video meeting to chat about anything BUT work. Building bonds and relationships outside of work is good for morale and improves productivity overall.
If you’ve not looked at your policies around letting employees expense their home internet and cell phone service, it’s time to revisit that in 2022. If employees are expected to have internet access and a cell phone to do their job, it’s reasonable to let them expense it in the process. Your CFO might panic when you bring this up as it’ll be a considerable expense, but it’s going to be well worth it in the end with improving employee morale.
Finally, the cleaning stipend is a way to help employees worry less about something in their lives. Letting employees hire a cleaning service might seem odd, but it’s about improving the environment they’re spending so much of their time in. A clean home will be a happier home. A more comfortable home will be better for morale and productivity. Your company hired cleaners for the office, so it’s not out of the question to help employees keep their workspace clean when it’s at home.
Focus on communication best practices
Finally, a final idea for improving productivity and morale is taking a hard look at how your company communicates internally with each other. Constant communication with your team might sound like great collaboration, and at times, it is, but other times, it makes it more difficult for deep work. For example, have you ever noticed how much work you can get done if you start working earlier than the rest of the team? It’s because you’ve removed interruptions from your work for a limited period.
Communication among your team is good, but too much of it is terrible. It focuses on putting out fires and playing the question-and-answer whack-a-mole game. Encourage your team that when they need to get deep work done, close all apps that might distract them – including their email and team chat solutions. Just as you might shut your office door to have long uninterrupted periods of deep quick, closing your apps is the digital equivalent of shutting the door.
Summary on workplace improving productivity and morale
I’ve broken down three ways to improve productivity and enthusiasm in the workplace heading into 2022. Look for ways to give employees time away from work, streamline their home life and improve their overall health, and provide them with the freedom to be unavailable during the day while focusing on other work tasks.
Michael Scott, the manager, played by Steve Carrell on NBC’s version of The Office, had a great line in season four when an employee was worried about being fired. He said:
“A good manager doesn’t fire people, he hires people and inspires people… people will never go out of business”.
If you want to improve productivity and morale heading into 2022: think about your people and how to improve their lives.
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Dvir Ben-Aroya is the co-founder and CEO of Spike, a conversational and collaborative email application that turns your email into a synchronous chat-like experience, adding tasks, collaborative notes and video meetings to create a single feed for all of your work — all in one place.
He has over 20 years of executive experience leading technology and internet companies.
