Increasing Employee Productivity Through Staff Activities and Training Opportunities

It’s safe to say the last 18 months have been a challenge for all of us, testing our abilities to work under our own initiative, meeting deadlines without the full-time support of an office atmosphere. Due to this, offices have had to adapt quickly to new ways of further supporting workers and their teams, keeping employee motivation high.

Team Building & Activities

Hosting team activities, either in small groups or company-wide online events, work wonders for team motivation - these can be things like company quizzes, virtual escape rooms, and movie or cocktail nights.

Even online, continuous team events create better working relationships between departments and individuals who may not usually mix. This, in time, will give a quicker turn-around on projects as staff will feel more confident in approaching different departments for anything.

It’s important to involve everyone while carrying out team events – for example when putting together a quiz night, you can ask staff to put together their own rounds if they would like or ask them fun facts about themselves, and everyone can guess who it may be about. This lets staff find out more about each other in a fun way without directly having to talk about themselves - which they can often find awkward or uncomfortable doing in other settings, particularly on Zoom calls.

Hosting regular events such as weekly book clubs or movie nights are great for employees as it gives them something to continuously look forward to and discuss with each other after each event. You can get everyone involved by using polls on work chats (like Slack or Teams) to help decide a film genre or which book to read each week.

Weekly events also work well because not everyone can attend events or activities on typically busier days of the week, like Fridays. So this ensures everyone feels included just as much as others even if they cannot attend.

Training & Workshops

It’s so important that employee’s feel like they are continuously supported throughout the time spent working from home. This allows continuous growth in themselves along with higher productivity within the company.

Group workshops work well as it allows individuals to share their top tips and tricks with the rest of the team, improving their confidence in presenting and the teams' way of working.

As there’s such a wide variety of online training courses available, companies can give individuals the specific areas of training they need, even if it isn’t possible to provide this training in-house. These courses are easily completed at a time to suit employees, making them more appealing and a great way to brush up on skills and knowledge.

Care Packages & Birthday Gifts

Sending care packages to employees is a sure-fire way to keep spirits high, particularly through a pandemic. These packages can include snacks, drinks, coffee mugs, diaries etc. - small things can make working from home a little bit nicer.

Staff birthday gifts are also a great way to make staff feel continuously appreciated at the workplace. Birthdays have always been a time to celebrate in the office, so even more reason to make an effort on birthdays while working from home, to keep employees feeling valued year after year.

I like to keep note of people’s favourite colours, foods, activities etc., when they are mentioned to help me send the perfect birthday and gift packages, and people are so appreciative of this! Paying attention daily to what people say about themselves can go a long way.

Summary

The more activities and workshops staff attend together, the better they become at communicating with one another, which massively helps when teams need to collaborate on projects to meet deadlines.

Productivity generally increases when employees feel happy in the workplace, they will want to do the most as they have value-creating higher motivation.

If an employee feels valued in their workplace, the more likely they will be to stay and want to progress and grow within the company rather than move onto other opportunities, which is why it’s so important to always provide employee support throughout their time at the company.