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Job satisfaction is an important part of a person's employment, being able to feel worthwhile, worthy, part of a team and having a feeling of achievement within the working environment are essential elements to happiness. These feelings can motivate a workforce and ensure they are at their most productive, and in turn, this attitude will motivate their colleagues. Through a series of simple exercises from team building psychology, it is possible to motivate yourself, your staff and inspire others.
Team building is part of a psychology discipline called organisational psychology. It is used to inspire groups of workers through a series of well planned events that are fun and motivational. Through these types of events, a worker can have a greater sense of job enrichment, and as their confidence grows, the more responsibilities can be taken on. This is a circle of reward, with positive feedback following positive action; a far more efficient way to have efficient workers.
Companies such as Google work on this premise that happy staff are productive staff. The job becomes more like a lifestyle, and after all, we spend the majority of our waking lives with the people we work with. Being able to get along and feel part of a team is just as important as feeling like part of a family. The offices at Google are famous for having a laid back atmosphere and encouraging staff to work on their own personal projects. Through doing this, the company believes that it will be rewarded with loyal and hard working individuals. By supplying extracurricular activities and allowing freedom of movement and choice, the worker feels in charge, in control and is more able to be productive.
These are the same principles that are used in team building psychology and they can be put in place in any workplace. Although the search engine giant has more resources at its disposal, and is able to provide tai chi and yoga classes throughout the day to help alleviate stress and encourage exercise; smaller companies are able to emulate this on a smaller budget, as it is the principle behind these activities, not the activities themselves.
By encouraging staff to exchange roles in the workplace or by having time where colleagues show each other what it is they do, each person will be aware of their role as part of a bigger picture. By understanding that they are part of a process, and consequently understanding that they are important in the process, a sense of worth will lead to a desire to work towards a common cause. This manifests itself in more creative and more productive thinking and working.
Flexible working hours allow a worker to have a greater feeling of control over their lives. There is a productive increase in output from people who work flexi hours or job share. The ability to be in control of their lives gives a sense of success and achievement and boosts self esteem. Workers that are trapped in a strict time-watching policy in the workplace often have a feeling of being trapped, out of control and under pressure to perform to a click. By removing those stresses, the sense of freedom will ripple through a workforce, and before you know it, daily team building will be taking place without anyone even knowing it.
About the Author Dom Donaldson is an expert in the events industry.Find out more about Team Building and the packages on offer today from Accolade Corporate Events.
