January has fallen upon us once more. The festivities are over, you’re finding pine needles piercing your socks and the kitchen floor is still sticky from drinks, all spilt in the spirit of Christmas. That spirit has now disappeared and replaced by something altogether more empty…more blue in fact.
You drag yourself to the office, sit upon your (once) long forgotten desk chair and find yourself surrounded by similarly bedraggled zombies all of whom resemble someone that you must have known a long, long time ago…
Okay, so let’s divert from this rather bleak prologue and share our three simple steps to revive your employees from their post-Christmas zombification:
Your employees are most likely so full of buffet food and Christmas dinners that they won’t even know what planet they’re on… So let’s give them a little direction, call a company meeting and give them an overview of where you see the business going in 2024. From there you can give each department a role to help achieve the overall objective of your business. This will help to unify the company whilst also giving your employees purpose as they have something to work towards.
So now your employees have a long term goal aligned to your businesses objectives, you can segment this and give each department a target to be achieved in January. If you ensure each department’s target is comparable you will be able to set an inter-department competition. All you need to do is spare a whiteboard for a month to keep track of each department’s success which will aid in spurring employees on to achieve or even smash their goals. By offering this competitive element you will encourage team work and inspire each department to achieve their target while maintaining a sense of fun.
Support employees in upholding their new year’s resolutions by getting your department heads to take note of each employees resolution (if they don’t have one then a resolution could be encouraged). Once the resolutions have been noted, you can now support your employees in keeping them. For example, provide office fruit bowls to support those who have vowed to eat healthy or allow an extra 15 minutes lunch break to give those who have committed to keep fit a chance to go out and get some exercise.
By implementing these simple and feasible tips you will be able to create a happy, focused and supportive environment. This will not only snap your employees out of their post-Christmas coma but also help with employee retention at a time that’s most popular for people to be looking or considering new job prospects.