2020 has been a changing year for the typical workplace as many employees find it even more difficult to push themselves to be energized at work. This is especially true when they are dealing with a high workload, experiencing burnout, or getting idle with the work-from-home setup.
As an office manager, you must be able to keep them energized and fuel their motivation during work hours. While it’s true that you cannot control each employee’s attitude towards their work, there are strategies you can follow to excite and encourage them to become their best versions.
Doing this may seem like an uphill battle. But to help you out, here are 7 ways to help your team be energized at work.
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1. Provide Healthy Office Snacks
According to Harvard Business Review, the kind of foods we use to fuel our bodies largely affect our performance — they contribute to how we move, feel, and think. Besides hydration and sleep, the food we eat has an important impact on our motivation and attention levels throughout the day.
So, the most obvious and easiest way to improve your employee productivity and keep them energized is by giving them easy access to healthy food. If they feel sluggish and have a hard time focusing on their task, you would want to help them fuel their energy.
When you want to take your business culture up a notch, start by thinking about providing healthy snacks. From fresh fruit to raw vegetables to whole-grain crackers, offering snacks that are good for the body is a great way to keep your team energized.
If you’re looking for specific snacks that will give your employees sustained energy, clear focus, and sharp thinking all through their workday, check out this article: 11 Healthy Office Snacks To Supercharge Productivity
2. Encourage A Healthy Work-Life Balance
According to Forbes, work-life balance is an important aspect of a healthy work environment. Maintaining work-life balance helps reduce stress and helps prevent burnout in the workplace.
As an office manager, encouraging and helping your employees maintain work-life balance can be vital to keep your team energized. Otherwise, a lack of work-life balance often leads to burnout and job dissatisfaction that can negatively impact productivity in the workplace.
To foster this, you can start by offering a flexible working schedule, encouraging time off, or by simply avoiding overtime culture. These simple strategies would create a big impact on your team’s energy that you could ever imagine.
3. Prioritize Wellness
Most people can get behind the idea that energy and productivity at work are related concepts. As an office manager, you have an opportunity to foster by prioritizing wellness in the workplace.
A workplace wellness program is a form of health benefits that you can provide to encourage employees to lead healthier lifestyles and keep them energized. These programs help them stay healthy or, in some cases, help them improve their physical, mental, or even financial health.
Wellness programs can range from ideas that have a specific purpose, such as helping the employee to stop smoking or to lose weight; to onsite gyms or gym memberships; to incentive programs that provide rewards for participation or in achieving the desired results.
In a nutshell, if someone is in good shape physically, mentally, and emotionally, both their work life and their personal life will improve, thus keeping them energized.
4. Organize Team-Building Activities
More and more businesses are realizing the importance of team-building activities to their employee engagement. You should too! Doing this speaks volumes about you as an office manager.
It shows that you see your staff as more than just employees and it sends a clear message to them that you’re willing to invest time and effort to ensure that they remain energized and happy in the organization.
You can start by organizing a casual lunch out, hosting a trivia night, or even simply grabbing a beer or a glass of wine with a couple of coworkers. Business deals, new friendship, and strong bonds are often formulated over team-building activities.
Doing this can lead your team to form new relationships and forge new bonds. These bonds, in turn, result in a more energized team.
5. Gamify Office Tasks
Gamification in the workplace uses game elements, a goal, achievements, and rewards system which encourages employee motivation and thus, improves the energy of your team.
This may be a given, but by gamifying your employees’ daily tasks, there could be an increase of employee satisfaction and performance. This strategy can combat office boredom, burnout, or even dissatisfaction.
For instance, It could be points, public recognition, or an employee perk like a voucher. Game-based learning for the development of skills is also a growing trend for the potential growth of both the business and the employee.
The benefits like making learning fun, building a team environment, and making employees more engaged can all contribute to the overall workplace productivity. In return, they utilize more of their acquired energy on the job and make the organization even stronger.
6. Empower and Create Opportunities
Oftentimes, when employees are empowered to make decisions on their own without being micromanaged, their motivation rises. It means that your team is more likely to be more energized if they are given freewill.
So, as an office manager, you must give employees opportunities to take actions on their own and involve them in decision-making. As much as possible, avoid taking the easy route by randomly assigning tasks to your team members. Instead, create opportunities and ask for volunteers.
Remember that strong teams are built by sharing opportunities, and team members will remain energized if given a chance to differentiate themselves. It means that everyone should have the opportunity to take the wheel. You’ll be surprised how much more energized and interested team members will be if you spread trust and accountability around.
7. Be A Source Of Energy
Oftentimes, employees are looking for leadership. It means that you cannot expect your team members to be energized if you, as their leader, is showing laziness or indolent behavior.
When managing your teams, start and end your day with enough energy because they usually pick up on your mood and body language. While it’s true that you cannot be at your best all the time, you should at least take control of how to get things done without loafing.
Further, try your best to keep huddles short and stick to an agenda when conducting a meeting. Nothing kills employee energy more than redundant meetings and unimportant tasks do. Make sure you fuel the fire of creativity by encouraging laughter and play without wasting anyone’s time.
All in all, as you show by example the way to have fun but get the work done, you’ll help and inspire your team do the same.
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The Takeaways
As an office manager, you need to expect the best from your team but realize that every organization is different. Make sure to keep in mind the unique needs of your employees and your type of workplace when implementing any of the tips we mentioned above.
The best way to keep your own team energized is by constantly encouraging them to build on ideas and asking them for suggestions on how they can truly have fun while working. Make sure that you are also open to new ideas and not tear their suggestions down immediately.
Remember that being able to communicate with your team is required when being an effective manager. This not only means communicating job responsibilities and expectations, it means listening to your team and working with them to create a fun and encouraging environment.
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