When dealing with Organization Development it is important to keep those people within the organization or working with you on a special project energized and motivated to keep productivity at levels that you can gain the highest ROI (return on Investment) rate possible. Yes, you will always have certain managers who will state that having a job should be motivation enough, but for the majority of workers out there that is not enough. Working on assigned teams or in a profession with high specialization there is a need to work upon morale to keep these individuals motivated, doing the same tasks with the same people day in, day out, becomes repetitive. So there is a requirement to liven things up, to break the monotony of the every day for one’s team, to keep innovation and productivity at acceptable or even extended levels.
Special events are a great time to break things up,when it comes to “special events” most commonly in organizations we were are talking about holidays. These are times in which employees, people can be highly emotional and be disrupted from their usual performance due to personal issues outside of the workplace. Now, when I state this I mean it can range from either clinical depression to something we all might think as minor as buying the right Christmas toy for a nephew. In either case, the stressors are there to throw the “monkey wrench” into any project manager’s schedule, or organizations plans to end a quarter well.
In many cases celebrating special events by an organization can bring a welcomed distraction to these special events, and lighten the mood in the workplace. In fact, throwing Halloween parties or allowing decorations in the workplace can brighten the office as well as fight the woes of the season or day. I speak from experience working in Retail to the Education-Corporate arenas there are different ways organizations celebrate special events. In the Retail arena it is a time to exploit the holiday or special event to make money which is the goal of most organizations, however the employee’s well-being at this time is not taken into account. In the Education-Corporate arena, employee well-being and engaging the employee on some level occurs during the holidays or the special event in some way, shape or form.
Focusing on the Corporate arena, the organization that allows the employees to decorate their cubicles may seem like an action that will have the least likely impact. However, it has been my experience that decorating cubicles, does, in fact increases employee engagement with one another and in fact does lighten the mood in the office especially when the organization is facing the crunch of meeting goals or its projections for a productive fourth quarter.
Building morale increase the likelihood of decreasing employee turnover rates, in the example, I am using many employees have been with the organization for more than four to five years. Servicing students in any regard can be taxing especially when lining up organizational year end budgets and goals with financial aid year deadlines assigned by the federal government are never in line. Why? Because in this case, the deadlines that each of these internal and external stakeholders had in mind are never parallel or congruent with one another making pleasing each group a challenge for the average employee. This added stress mixed with the monotony of the doing the same tasks day in day out very taxing and stressful. Therefore, when these employees have the chance to say participate in Halloween costume or decoration contests the morale and the productive of these employee increases. Not only due to a change in routine but a focus upon the employee.
We as individuals do not befriend or fall in love with other individuals outside of our families for example because they are there… but because they focus attention on us. Thereby the same concept is in play here, by putting a spotlight upon the employee, in turn, gives them a sense of importance to the organization. The organization reaps the benefits of this simple engagement in terms of productivity, the spotlight boosts the morale of the employees, and it is a win-win situation for all. In the example I mentioned, employees were falling over backward to complete their tasks for the day, just so they could decorate their cubicles or assists others of their team to create theme based setups for Halloween. Individual employees who usually you could not pry two words out of were discussing multiple ideas of how to decorate their cubicles, win office contests, and even discuss what plans they had for that day!
This built a sense of synergy amongst them, and in which lead to an increase in their communication skills, and discussion of how to solve issues that they faced throughout the day, in a more effective manner, through the increase of all-round information sharing that happened as a result. My point is if you want increases in innovation, communication, and productivity look to special events and/or holidays as ways to bolster your attempt. Having something that most individuals are geared up to participate in is the most effective way implement any program that will produce the results that you want to achieve and give the employees something to look forward to.
Quick question: Has there been a time, that you have participated at a special event at work and morale has improved at least for a short time? For example, around Halloween or St. Patrick’s day?
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