January is a difficult month for a lot of people. In particular, returning to work after the high of the holiday season can leave a lot of people feeling low.
Fortunately, there are ways to spruce up your work environment that will make it a more appealing place to come back to, and hopefully ease your staff back into work in a way that makes them smile.
Let’s look at some of the ways you can keep the January blues at bay:
How to Motivate Your Staff in January
Celebrate Small Achievements
Make the workplace a hive of positivity. People are more likely to feel down in January, so be sure to make more fuss of the good things, like successfully delivering presentations, sharing good ideas, and completing tasks.
Celebrating achievements triggers a release of dopamine in the brain, which makes us feel positive and energised.
Set Short Term Goals
Short term goals that can be met easily are a great way of motivating employees in the workplace. The pressure of long-term projects can make a task seem daunting, so breaking it into smaller, quickly achievable chunks will help your team fund more successes at a quicker pace, while making your team feel more productive and the workload appear more manageable.
Work to Rule
Working to rule is all about prioritising a healthy work/life balance. This means making sure everyone goes to lunch, finishes on time, and isn’t working silly hours that will make them feel worse.
By giving your employees a solid structure, you can eliminate one of their worries right from the start. They’ll be able to focus on their work and mental health much better if they know their employer is looking out for them, too.
How to Make Work Fun
As well as motivating your staff and making it a productive environment, you should also try to make it fun. This will raise morale and generally help your employees to beat the January blues.
Make the Workplace a Nice Environment
People are less likely to have a negative experience coming back to work if the environment itself is a nice setting. In an office, for example, consider adding splashes of colour with artwork and plenty of plants, which have been proven to have a positive mental effect.
You could also play music in the workplace to keep spirits high – maybe even set up a collaborative playlist that everyone can add to, and make a game of guessing who added what song.
Have Regular Events
A good working atmosphere is about more than just the work; try hosting regular social events that will get your team engaged in work again. These events don’t need to be big at all.
This could be something as simple as a group walk at lunch-time, or a drink after work. It’s just about creating social elements to the workplace that will ease people back into each other’s company.
Hold Competitions
A little bit of friendly rivalry does wonders for morale as well as productivity. Workplace competitions should be small and easy – i.e., make sure that adding a competitive element doesn’t affect the quality of work or anyone’s physical or mental safety.
The competitions could be work-related like meeting goals, more long-term challenges like meeting a steps goal, or something more immediate for a short burst of positivity, like a raffle or trivia game.
Design a Healthy Workplace with Label Source
Before you get going with any of the motivation tips above, make sure the workplace itself is safe for your staff to return to with Label Source’s vast range of office signage. Alternatively, get in touch with us for more advice.
