Get your staff back to work with these 3 easy steps
Step 1. Communication
According to Safe Work Australia, all businesses must be communicating their commitment to staff around the current pandemic. Naturally staff have been concerned, for their safety particularly those with young children or older relatives which they care for or even health concerns of their own.
Your employees will require reassurance that you are doing everything you can to eliminate risks and create a physically safe workplace. In turn, you can communicate your commitment to the employee safety with Covid safe signage and share your Covid safe cleaning and hygiene plans. These must adhere to the latest state or territory government advice. This information can be found at the state and territory government websites.
Step 2. Confidence
Your staff will have confidence in returning to their workplace if they trust you. So how does understanding trust considerations influence workplace return intentions? Firstly, understanding the governments advice for your state. Stay abreast of the Governments changes and make sure to communicate this to the staff especially when changes and updates occur. When staff are consistently receiving information, confidence and trust is formed. This is not only important in the short term but also in the longer term, as it is needed not only to get the workforce back into the workplace but also serves as a strong driver of workplace motivation and productivity. Furthermore, a key element to a confident workplace, is comradery, “The best part of going into work was seeing and catching up with other people and the incidental conversations you have with your workmates. Comradery and office banter create a positive work environment. All these interactions are beneficial whether it be for guidance on a project, or just joking around”. Covid safe signage will be in the background, reassuring employees around health and safety.
Step 3. Engage
Engaging your staff can be achieved in wayfinding and visual communications to improve creativity and mental focus. Moreover, experiential graphics can play a critical role in how we interact and feel about our workplace. Your brand communications go well beyond a logo or advertisement. It forms the engine room of your work environment. A great branded workplace is one that uses graphics to reflect and reinforce your companies brand through the use of colour, imagery, illustration. Office graphics serves the propose to accommodate different people’s roles, functions and behaviour. Understanding how people move through and experience places is a key difference that distinguishes staff performance. Check out Zip Money they have purposely created a space that’s vibrant colourful, creative, fun and motivational.
Companies are also conscious of addressing other health considerations. Mental health, anxiety and stress have all changed and in some cases increased in our workplace. Providing positive and informative messages in the work place around sleeping, water consumption, exercise and positive mental health practices have become important for companies to address. The reassures the employees that you care about their well being moving forward and reminds them of best in class practices around general health.
Mirvac are leading the way with this type of messaging in their offices, seeking information around the importance of Circadian Rhythms and sleeps patterns for staff along with encouraging healthy eating and water consumption. They are displaying these messages all throughout their offices showing they care about their employees. They are also creating wellness spaces and installing office graphics in their small meeting rooms to encourage positive relaxing spaces that employees can feel comfortable in. All small things companies can do to create employee happiness, comfort and loyalty.
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