If you haven’t noticed by now, The CODE Group believes that focusing on you is important – yes, YOU. We truly believe that by helping individuals learn ways to care for themselves they are more likely to be productive employees and “love what they do.” We truly believe it’s important to educate ourselves and our teams on employee wellness, ways to stress less, and even ways to do your job well, but this article is specific to creating a culture of belonging by focusing on ways to create positivity in the workplace.
Creating a positive work environment encourages happier employees, promotes collaboration, and helps employees become invested in the tasks and projects that they are working on. Employees who are connected to their colleagues and their work are less likely to be unproductive or a drain on the environment. Read this article to learn ways to recognize a toxic workplace culture, how to create a positive culture, and ways to recognize employees within your team.
How to Recognize a Toxic Workplace
In order to create and sustain a positive workplace culture, it’s important to understand what a toxic workplace environment looks like. Toxic workplace cultures, usually mean low-performing teams and disgruntled employees, that may display some of the characteristics listed below:
- Confusion about individual or team goals
- Confusion about roles and responsibilities
- Attention directed to personal power and status rather than performance and mission-support
- Opposition and conflict amongst team members
- Competition not cooperation between team members
- Disempowerment – waiting for others to act rather than taking initiative
- Blame and finger-pointing
- Withholding information or poor communication
- Failure to listen; lots of telling
- Defending positions and actions, rather than seeing feedback as a gift
- High employee turnover
- Little-to-no work-life balance
- Gossip and behavior that promotes exclusivity
- Ineffective leadership that ignores or the opposite, a micromanager
- Unenthusiastic employees that find their work demoralizing or unfulfilling
How to Create a Positive Workplace
Now that you know what a toxic workplace culture looks like, let’s understand what a positive workplace culture is and how to create and sustain it. A positive workplace creates happy and satisfied employees. A positive workplace culture has the following qualities:
- Open and clear communication
- Ample growth opportunities
- Emphasis on creativity
- Healthy working relationships
- Well-defined purposes
- Recognition and rewards
Use the below ways to create and cultivate a positive workplace within your team:
- Set and promote clear team/office goals and values
- Establish a strong code of ethics for the team
- Promote diversity of backgrounds and thoughts, and inclusivity within the team to encourage differences
- Allow for humor, fun and laughter
- Promote transparency – open and honest communication
- Offer a relaxed and productive atmosphere
- Share your commitment for excellence
- Promote cooperation, support, and empowerment of new ideas
- Be compassionate, respectful and understanding of others
- Offer flexibility and embrace change
- Encourage positive reinforcement and compliments at work
- Create an employee recognition program
- Support work-life balance and emphasis on health, family and wellness
- Be consistent in your words and actions
- Encourage the practice of gratitude and positive thinking
- Don’t sacrifice what’s important for what’s urgent
- Encourage active listening
- Check in with your team members regularly
- Promote learning and development opportunities
- Encourage time-off to relax and reset
- Try to change the perspective of feedback from criticism to a gift
- Plan social gatherings and time together to foster positive interactions
- Be open to new, innovative ideas
- Trust and have confidence in your team members’ abilities
How to Recognize and Reward Employees
To encourage and promote a positive workplace, use the below ideas to reward and recognize your employees:
- Give them extra responsibility if their job has become too routine
- Praise them with one of these compliments or one of your own
- “I couldn’t have done that without you.”
- “Thank you for helping me. I owe you one!”
- “You always know when to lend a hand, what a great quality.”
- “I appreciate you taking responsibility.”
- “Having you on the team makes a huge difference.”
- “You always do a great job when I give you something new.”
- “I couldn’t imagine the team without you.”
- “You are wonderful to work with!”
- Offer flexibility in performing responsibilities or extra duties
- Say thank you with a gift card
- Create a staff Shout-Outs board for team members to leave a post-it note of positive feedback and compliments for others
