All good things come in threes. That’s true also when it comes to the magical ingredients that together create a pleasant workplace, if you ask us.
We think that there are three conditions that together can be absolutely crucial to whether or not you end up enjoying a place of work – something we carry with us in our work with work environment policy and recruitment.
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Being proud of what you do
There are two aspects to this. The first is the experience of actually enjoying the work you do, of liking the tasks you carry out. The other is insight of the importance of the work you do and a feeling of contributing. The latter typically contributes to the former: my efforts are valuable to the business, and so they feel meaningful to me.
So how do you create the optimal environment for this? A big part of it, naturally, is the task of the employer or manager. At the recruitment stage, you need to find staff with potential – people who show a genuine interest in learning more about exactly what this job is about. And after that, communication is central. When an employee starts to feel like anyone could do their job and it doesn’t really matter whether they turn up for work or not, for instance, it is the manager’s task to encourage them and make them feel, for real, how valuable they are. There are many different ways to do that, but sometimes it can be as simple as pointing to cause and effect: when you help this customer, that results in them staying for longer and becoming more loyal, which contributes to the growth of the business.
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Trusting the management
As a manager, being someone the team really trusts is crucial – but trust is something you earn. It’s not enough to just say that your door’s always open. You have to show it too, and act in ways that make your staff feel like you genuinely mean it, which in turn makes it a realistic option for them to turn to you when they need support or help.
What’s more, trust goes both ways. In order to enjoy my work, I need to feel that I’m allowed to actively contribute to the daily routines, that my managers trust that I’ll do my very best and that my ideas are encouraged and taken seriously. When my managers trust me enough to allow me to experiment, make mistakes and learn from them, so that together, we can create an innovative, creative, forgiving and forward-thinking work environment, then the fear of being criticised and the pressure of perfectionism vanish – and then I’m also more likely to trust them and dare to raise difficult issues.
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Having fun together with your colleagues
Staff surveys repeatedly show that what makes people stay in their jobs rarely has very much to do with higher salaries and luxurious perks. It’s about wellbeing, about a place you enjoy spending time in and a team spirit that contributes to everyone having fun together.
This type of team spirit can be fostered in different ways. There must be room – physically speaking or in terms of digital platforms – for fun. Achievements and successes must be celebrated, a sense of humour helps, and workplace wellbeing diaries should have scheduled activities the purpose of which is primarily to have fun together. It pretty much goes without saying: when we give out to each other, sulk and refuse to be there for each other, that results in seriously bad vibes – so how do we flip it to make sure that we can have as much fun together as possible?
At 3C Online, we try to keep these three golden ingredients in consideration in everything we do, from recruitment and onboarding to workplace wellbeing strategy and business development. Hopefully, you’ll notice that when you come for an interview. Maybe you’ll become one of those who stay for many years, like so many other of our happy co-workers.
