Finding ways to enable our workforce to enjoy themselves, protect their mental health, and thrive within the workplace should concern us all. There has never been a more important time to implement strategies that help employees enjoy and stay engaged with their work. When employees find their work pleasurable and feel connected to the company they serve, this inherently supports their work psyche. Here are five ideas you can explore that do just that.
Turn work into a game
A great way to improve the psyche of employees is to turn a creative work assignment into a game. Doing this is easier than you might think. The first step is to provide a safe space for your team to be innovative. Next, set the expectations (the game’s “rules”) so your employees understand that during this work initiative (aka the “game”), they have the freedom to “play.” Then, state the rules of “winning” as clearly as possible (e.g., three creative solutions for a specific problem). Lastly, you decide how long the game is to last.
By reframing a business problem as a game, you design a nurturing environment for innovation because this discovery and problem-solving method explicitly encourage your employees to get creative. By inviting your employees to play, you signal that free-thinking is the modus operandi for this particular exercise. This stimulates workers to share openly because, during the game, all ideas and creative input are encouraged and valued. Also, by providing parameters on what’s expected to win—you help to focus individual and group energy in a positive way.
Let employees be anthropologists for a day
Anthropologists assess the world around us in a scrupulous manner to achieve a deeper understanding of how different people organize their lives, articulate their values, and form rituals. By giving your employees the instruction to spend the day acting as if they were anthropologists, you ask them to critically examine their workday as if they were outside observers. By shifting to this perspective, your employees will likely become more mindful of the daily habits they have normalized. They will gain new insight on what they find exciting about their job, as well as ways they can potentially improve their workday.
The value of this exercise comes from deliberately observing routines familiar to us through a different lens than we’re accustomed to. By allowing ourselves to look at things from a new angle, we can unearth opportunities to improve our work routine and put a plan into action to capitalize on what was discovered. Challenging your workers to unpack and dissect their work as an anthropologist can also help them find the things they inherently find interesting and fun outside their normal routine that they can further explore. With their participation, you can help role-play their way to building a more fulfilling workday.
Inspire internal comradery
We will all be recovering from the collective trauma of the pandemic for years to come. One of the most damaging effects of stay-at-home orders we all felt was the loss of real human connection. As such, most of us are now looking for ways to reconnect with one another. This presents a ripe opportunity for companies to encourage camaraderie in the workplace and reinvigorate team dynamics.
An idea to inspire this that does not run the risk of coming off as contrived is forming internal interest groups—like a book club or hiking group—that employees can self-select into voluntarily. Alternatively, simply creating an internal message forum (using a digital tool like Slack) to help employees connect around common interests works almost as well. Facilitating employees to opt-in to groups that appeal to them (especially areas of interest that are not specifically job-related) inspires more organic internal interactions, leading to a sense of connectedness. This type of self-organizing around common interests inherently leads to stronger bonds between employees, which naturally increases the overall sentiment about their workplace.
Support acts of altruism
According to research by Dr. Chrsitian Ehrlich, pursuing a goal means more to us when it is embedded with altruism. Projects with a philanthropic slant can help to inspire cooperative efforts and bring more meaning into professional pursuits.
If you need a jump start, begin with an initiative to discover which causes your employees to care about. Using something as simple as a poll, your business can find out which charities and causes are collectively popular, as well as ways that the business can best go about supporting them. For example, this could come in the form of introducing a monthly “give back” day where people can get together to volunteer for a common cause.
Alternatively, you could research the ways that your workers are already engaged in their community and create a method to highlight their accomplishments—showcasing the community involvement your employees are having outside of work, undoubtedly inspiring others to do the same.
Showcasing these efforts can help remind your employees that there is still good in the world, a sentiment that is very much needed right now. Supporting an “all in this together” company culture helps increase morale by connecting the workforce to activities rooted in kindness.
Encourage novel ways to connect
Walking meetings aren’t for everyone, but they can be quite restorative for those open to them. Getting up from our chairs and into some fresh air is not only good for the body and mind, the activity is known to amplify creativity and improve social engagement. You can encourage this practice by supplying your workforce with easy-to-read maps that contain local walking routes that the average walker can complete in 30 minutes (the average length of the typical meeting). This simple strategy is often all that’s needed to nudge people into engaging in this healthy behavior.
Another idea to encourage connection is an iteration of the book club idea stated earlier. Schedule monthly talks from various outside authors and thought leaders that are accessible to your entire workforce. The new ideas brought forth during these monthly sessions will help inspire and hopefully encourage healthy internal dialogue about the topic throughout the month.
These are just a few ideas to get you started. As you look to support your employees’ psyche, the aim is to come up with fun initiatives that create some variety in the workday. Help employees connect to one another. Also, help them connect to outside interests and causes that collectively resonate. By supporting your employees’ sense of competence and autonomy, as well as helping them feel better connected, you will be making a significant impact in helping to support their work psyche.
