Humanetrics LLC

Fire Up Your Employees! Idea Center

Here is our list of ways to add excitement and fun to your workplace. This is part of the process to Fire Up! your employees:

• Explain yourself – host an “explain yourself” portion of each of your team meetings. Pick a topic and have each employee explain some aspect of him/herself related to the topic. Topics could include hobbies, food, favorite actors, what people like to read, favorite movies, where you shop, what aggravates you about …(work, customers, companies, traffic, etc). The topics are limitless and they do several important things: they get employees talking and they get employees connecting with each other. This builds relationships and shares critical information.
• Have teams decorate common areas (cafeterias, recreation rooms, coffee stations) with a particular theme. Leave themes up to employees or tie them into specific organizational objectives and initiatives. Change things each month. Draw attention to the event.
• Require employees to submit an idea each week to invent a response to an issues, topic or problem that management posts each week. Review each idea at a team meeting and use them as the starting point to solve issues.
• Change up – change one thing each week; it could be the ride to work, the coffee, the way the team meets, where the team meets, the approach to a meeting or project, etc. Comment on what was different and better by the change.
• Have all employees find one meaningful article in something they have read in the past week. It could be from a newspaper, magazine, on-line source including blogs and news journals. Make a copy (electronic or paper) and add a statement on the top starting with “this is what is important about this article…” This encourages all employees to reading, reviewing and watching their world – and requires employees to share what they see so that all can improve and stay informed.
• Create a 10-minute morning ritual called “Human Update” where all employees gather and mention one thing that happened between the time the left work last night and this morning. This insures that all employees know what is going on with their peers; it is a great way to know who is having a tough morning and who is upbeat. Help each other out – but this can only happen if you know what is going on in the lives of your colleagues.
• Post the most critical empirical performance goals for the week. Explain why they are meaningful and solicit input from employees to help achieve them. Leave time at the end of each week to assess the progress on the goals and be prepared to celebrate success or regroup and revise completion strategies.
• Hand out magnets to all employees. Use that analogy that it is up to them to attract positive energy, emotions and results. Have employees complete a weekly “attracted” list – those things that turned out to be positive by a change in attitude, energy or procedure.
• Post a large “+” sign on a bulletin board that all can see. Have employees add positive comments as good things happen during the week at work and in their personal lives. Remember we are dealing with people in the workplace. Employees are fully involved in both their personal and professional lives; sharing details about successes in both encourages a more unified and human workplace.
• Connections – have all employees to identify a list of each employee’s 25 most important connections. Provide time each week for the employee to contact one of these contacts; insist that they discuss some aspect of business and some aspect of relationship. The contact advances the name of the business, the quality of the response and shares ideas. Many times the best ideas come from a conversation with someone that on the surface would not seem to be connected. Expand your employees’ contacts for both work and performance.
• Surprise your team or employees by providing lunch. Do something unusual so that it makes an impression such as have it served by waiters in tuxes, have a pushcart come and cook like a street vendor, have a barbecue in the winter or Thanksgiving meal in the summer.
• Every now and then send out the following to your employees: “I love my job because….” Share the responses. Add some humor and send out “I love my manager because…” or any other person who is part of the culture. Start to help employees see the things that add value and quality to their work days.
• Create several interviewing teams – teams who take turns interviewing for open positions. Have a training program so that all employees become great at interviewing and include a mix of employees on each team. The more diverse the interviewers, the greater perspectives they will have about each applicant. It also drives a great sense of loyalty and activates employee ownership as they look to insure that only the RIGHT employee is hired.
• The opposite of fear is not courage, but curiosity. Help your employees overcome their fears in the workplace by creating an open and honest workplace that discusses everything, tries new things and allows for failures and successes.
>“What makes me unique” – have all employees fill this out and share with each other. The best way to create a powerful team of caring and performing people is to help them get to know each other not only by what they do, but by who they are.
• Give this statement to your employees then ask them how they can make it happen: “Live with a bold and blatant disregard for normal constraints.” (Tom Peters). What are their ideas for inventing, working and service customers in a bolder way? Start monthly meetings with this statement and brainstorm opportunities.
• Host a monthly speaker on a variety of topics – work performance, health and fitness, life balance, developing talents, etc. Announce it well before the date and modify employees’ work schedules to allow them to attend. Talk about the program after it is done and what action plan items employees prepared.
• Start an employee development process. Host career conversations with employees every 6 months. Use the formats available from Humanetrics LLC.
• Create a mentor or buddy program. Match employees who can help others advance to better performance. Provide time for the mentoring to happen. Host a mentoring education program to be sure that the mentoring relationships succeed.
• Put every employee in front of a customer. Be sure that every employee has the opportunity to talk to, communicate with and make an impression on a customer. All employees perform in a more significant way when they know that they have personal contact with customers. The more the employee is connected to the customer’s buying experience, the more engaged the employee and the more personality is provided.
• Have all employees complete the on-line talents survey provided by the book “Strengthsfinder 2.0″ by Tom Rath. These books can be purchased from Amazon.com from a direct link on www.humanetricsllc.com. This will introduce all employees to the language of talents and help them more clearly define their strong performance areas (talents). This also encourages employees to invent opportunities for the organization that match the way they think.
• Create a slogan or logo for program or event that you want to draw attention to. Hire a graphic artist to create the logo; make pins, buttons or patches to give to employees to wear. Slogans or logos that related to service programs could be: GUTS (Guaranteed Unconventional Total Service), ACE (The Absolute Customer Experience), ESP (The Extraordinary Service Perspective), Xtreme Service, etc. Creating banners and pins draws customer attention to the program and unifies the team around a common initiative.
• Host a “Rock the Boat” program – encourage BIG and INNOVATIVE ideas from employees; everything is to be considered. Employees want to be involved in things that have a big impact. Get them excited about owning the solutions to problems and being heard. Award a prize to the idea used that has the greatest impact on performance or profits.
• To provide extraordinary service requires each employee to be a customer hero…in fact, a superhero. Have each employee define their superhero identity including their superhero talents and how they respond in a way that makes them a superhero to customers. Pay a caricature artist to come in and draw the superhero identities. Post them around the workplace to remind employees of the need to unite and provide service as superheroes.
• Need some more ways to FIRE UP! employees and have fun at work, click on these sites: http://www.funatwork.co.uk/, http://www.playfair.com/fun.htm, http://www.abbott-langer.com/alafun.html, http://www.almorale.com/furk.html.
• Identify the most fun-loving employee (probably a salesperson) and charge them with the task of Funmaster. Engage him/her to be responsible for a weekly or monthly event (during work hours) that adds some levity or fun to the workplace. Have the Funmaster select a team of funsters who assist the Funmaster in his/her role.