The end of the year is fast approaching, and you may be finding your employees beginning to run out of puff. November-itis may well be in full effect in your workplace, the result of looking back on (almost) an entire year of work, deadlines, meetings, and customer and client interactions. Looking forwards, employees see their holiday plans, Christmas, down time and the highlights of summer. Yet here we are, too close to the former and too far from the latter.
How can you best support your staff finishing these final weeks of the year and ensure a successful and productive finish to the working year? One of the following three approaches may provide some help.
1. Encourage your staff to have a laugh
A familiar article written by Alison Beard for the Harvard Business Review notes that “Laughter relieves stress and boredom, boosts engagement and well-being, and spurs not only creativity and collaboration but also analytic precision and productivity”. The Mayo Clinic’s website says laughter “doesn’t just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body” by stimulating your organs by increasing your oxygen intake, allowing your brain to release more endorphins, and stimulating both circulation, helping muscles to relax, and heart rate, increasing and then decreasing it which can lead to a relaxing feeling.
Encouraging a workplace culture where people can be themselves can present one way to inspire the right kind of good humour.
2. Trial a summer schedule
During the summer, some organisations will slightly tweak their hours to give staff some extra time off. Employers may pick one day, often a Friday for the extra benefit of extending the weekend, and encourage staff to finish their working week a few hours early. Minds tend to wander at this time of year, and if you do decide to shorten the working week, be sure to communicate that employees are expected to still complete their set work tasks.
Done right, you can potentially receive the same level of output from staff, but receive the added benefit of increased engagement/loyalty that staff experience when they feel their employer is giving them some type of workplace perk.
In an article for Inc., small business advisor Marla Tabaka, suggests a few ways a summer schedule could look in your workplace:
Everyone leaves early on a Friday afternoon (if your business can manage this), otherwise…
- Create alternating rosters for early Friday hours so half your workforce can be off early each Friday.
- Allow staff to choose which afternoon of the week they’d like to take off.
- If your business can’t survive on any less than 40 hours per week, try to condense that into four days of work. Staff may be happy to work longer hours Monday through Thursday if it means they can have Fridays off.
- Allow staff to work from home one day a week during the summer. Normalise this by having senior staff lead by example.
Any of these approaches are good alternatives for employers who are not able to offer financial bonuses/raises and will make a difference to your employees
3. Communicate your 2020 goals
While you don’t want to hammer staff with too many new processes or projects towards the end of the year given they are more likely to balk at large scale changes when they’re running near empty, you may be better off communicating your plans for the following year.
A US survey from the Society for Human Resources in America found that 77% of staff surveyed in an annual satisfaction and engagement survey felt that having a clear indication of their employer’s future vision and missions was important to their job satisfaction.
In an article for Forbes, Elena Bajic, CEO of Ivy Exec, says that when team members have a clear idea of how their individual work contributes to the bigger picture, in her experience, they’re more likely to work harmoniously to achieve those goals.
To share these visions effectively, Bajic offers the following advice:
- Hone your story and explain it clearly. Relay your vision to your staff in the same way you would explain it to your children. But don’t be patronising, just be clear and keep it simple.
- Seek external advice. If you’re a leader, draw on the expertise of your HR lead. If you’re working in HR, it might be helpful to seek the head of finance’s input.
- Bring everyone together. This is especially important if you have more than one office space. All staff should feel part of any changes that you implement.
There you have it – three ways to stave off November-itis. Best of luck making it through the next few weeks. And take comfort in the fact that Christmas is just around the corner.
By Dr Peter Williams, Senior Lecturer, Avondale Business School