A Great Culture Is The Gift Your Organisation Needs This Christmas

We barely need to explain why Christmas is a special time of year. 

But, in a worrying trend, we’re seeing that workers are increasingly using Christmas as a desperately needed opportunity to veg out and recharge their batteries because they’re totally exhausted.

Concerningly, those very same workers tend to look ahead to the New Year with dread, and shuffle into January like reluctant zombies preparing themselves for another 12 months of grind.

That can’t be right, can it? 

Surely organisations would rather that their employees head into Christmas with a sense of ‘a good year done’ and come bouncing back into the office in January ready to hit the ground running? 

But how is that done?

And how can your organisation give itself the invaluable Christmas gift of a workplace culture where employees perform to a high level at all times and remain loyal because they’re happy in their environment?

Is Workplace ‘Wellness’ Tackling Real Issues?

The Great Resignation trend sweeping across America and making its way into other Western economies is seeing people quitting their jobs in droves because:

1. They don’t like their respective current working conditions or their employers’ practices
2. They feel that the jobs – and, in particular, remote jobs – market is so buoyant at the moment that they can get a new role that much better suits their needs

And who can blame them?

It’s all very well encouraging staff to do yoga, go for a walk in their lunch breaks, eat nuts and seeds instead of unhealthy snacks or even giving them access to swanky gyms or other benefits. 

But where are the real solutions for problems like employee burnout, depression or gaslighting? Or – most crucially of all – the kind of systemic work/life imbalance that results in people spending more time at work or commuting than with their loved ones or doing things that make them feel relaxed and happy?

Our extensive research and experience shows us that organisations aren’t doing enough to ensure that their employees have proper balance in their lives. 

Without that balance, they can’t be happy. And if employees aren’t happy, there’s a strong likelihood that they will not be anywhere near as productive or high performing as they can be. 

Better Balance = Happier And More Productive Employees

Balance is about finding enough time in your day or life in general to do things that make you happy. 

And that’s simply not achievable if work is taking up all your time and focus.

We’re generally all agreed that being a workaholic is not a healthy behaviour (or set of behaviours), aren’t we? How many hundreds of Hollywood and Christmas films have there been about that very topic? 

And, yet, how often do we hear stories of executives working themselves to the point of exhaustion, to the detriment of their family and personal lives? 

On the other hand, work is a good thing. It gives us purpose. And being good at what we do fills us with confidence and a sense of achievement that breeds happiness which filters into our lives beyond the workplace.

As simple as it sounds, at Tribe365, we firmly believe that ‘Happier people = better performance’. 

Outdated Cultures Hinder Happiness And High Performance

But how can staff be happy if they’re tied to their desks all day doing tasks they find pointless or watching the clock until they can go home? 

The traditional 9-5 creates boredom-induced exhaustion and resentment. It’s outdated and causes imbalance that translates into frustration and lethargy – neither of which is conducive to a happy, productive or high performing workplace. 

And yet there continues to be this mistrust of flexible or remote work cultures, even though the high performance of employees working from home during lockdown often proved the difference between organisations folding or surviving. 

In fact, forward-thinking organisations that have thrived during the pandemic because of the success of this new way of working have since embraced home working. 

Why? 

Because they’ve built a culture of trust that means they can rely on their people to do a great job, even if it means taking part of the day to pick the kids up from school or taking time out to do something they enjoy, like playing a round of golf, going for a swim or whatever they do to relax. 

But how do organisations go about creating a culture of mutual trust?

The Right Behaviours For High Performing Teams

If you’re an employee that feels free – within reason – to do tasks in your own time, then the likelihood is that you’re going to want to do a great job and hit deadlines.

Why wouldn’t you? There’s too much to lose by behaving in a way that puts this culture of trust and high performance at risk.

In short, happy staff give more back to the workplace than people that resent their job or don’t commit themselves 100%.

But it takes a lot of work to get to this place – to this workplace nirvana.

There are negative behaviours that organisations need to eradicate from their cultures, like siloing, over-competitiveness, sneakiness, dishonesty and other caustic behaviours you can surely imagine. But that takes time; and, to some degree, some team or group training.

And then there are positive behaviours that organisations must introduce in their place, such as:

• Collaboration and teamwork

• Making sure everyone believes in what they’re doing 100% of the time

• Making sure everyone is on the same journey, and happy with the way things are progressing  

• Team members speaking up and being heard when there’s something they’re unhappy about, be it workload, strategic direction or anything else  

• Creating the right conditions for everyone in the team to achieve real balance in their lives, such as agreeing to support one another and pick up tasks when team members are on leave or absent for other reasons

Get all the above right, and you won’t have to head into next year’s Christmas period knowing that you and your colleagues are burning out, or worrying that everyone’s going to be slow out of the blocks and miserable when they come back in January.