Don't settle for an "OK" office culture

By Carisa Peters, guest blogger
Owner and Administrator of Holmes Marketing Services.
Her focuses are Human Relations, Client Experience, and Office Culture.

The average person will spend over 90,000 hours working in their lifetime. Because of this, your work environment can have a huge impact on your quality of life. As the world around us accelerates at a rapid rate, we are learning from studies that individuals are a bit worn out from all the hustle and bustle of a world that is always “on”. What would make the workplace setting less tedious and more fulfilling?​

For the first 20 years of my career, we had a particularly specific type of office culture. This was to work hard all day non-stop. There was simply no room for down time.

Now, I am not saying there is anything wrong with what we did at that time, but looking back, I know I longed for something different.

In 2007, I was given the opportunity to assume leadership of the company along with my two brothers. This began a journey of transformation that we are honestly still on to this very day!

This transformation began then to create a company that would be ready for the future - a company with fun and exciting professionals that not only delivered results, but also had a blast doing it!

Over the next 10 years, day by day we moved toward that culture vision. What we’ve found is that it takes the little--and big--moments to create a dynamic office culture. You just have to find the right recipe for your people and your vision. Here are some ideas we have incorporated into our culture. Maybe it will give you an idea or two...

• Celebrate work anniversaries and birthdays with the office’s favorite food! (Our’s is dessert!)
• Offer and coordinate team volunteering opportunities
• Sponsor and coordinate fun & engaging holiday parties
• Create a collaborative work environment
• Redecorate the environment to be bright and engaging
• Offer team building events
  
• Practice a compassionate leadership style
• Play Jenga (or a different game) weekly as an opportunity to let loose and relax
• Send out a monthly internal digital newsletter to keep everyone in the loop
• Share random expressions of saying “thank you” (Such as a cup of coffee, an email, or a team shout-out)
• Be flexible with work schedules
• Give opportunities for all team members to have a voice and give feedback, ideas and opinions
• Set an example of respect in the office environment
• Sponsor and coordinate personality testing exercises so that team members can improve communication
• Create an interactive break room wall for the team to interact
• Music!
• Incorporate a client “words of appreciation” wall
• Cookouts
• Office pet (our’s is a fish named Steve!)
• Visits from team member pets!!

I hope some of our ideas have helped get your creative wheels turning! Always remember that the road to creating the ideal culture is never really over, but it is a journey worth taking.