Keep Employee Morale High With These On Site Activities

Employee morale is one of those things that, as an office manager, falls under your jurisdiction. Keeping employee morale high can be quite a challenge, though, as years of success of the comic strip Dilbert illustrates quite vividly.

Most managers solve this problem by taking office field trips to a baseball game or an extended, off-site lunch, but it may actually be in your best interest to keep your employees on-site.

The important distinction is that if you manage to have a good time on-site then your employees will actually associate the good memories they have while having fun as a team on company property. As an added bonus having in-house activities can also keep your budget down since grand gestures often tend to be a drain on company resources.

So what’s the magic solution to increasing employee morale while keeping costs down? The answer, of course, is getting creative. The following are four ways you can have fun activities planned for work.

Throw birthday parties.

Everyone likes to be recognized on their birthday. This unifying fact means that celebrating an employee in such a way is a great way to increase morale. If you’re a small company, then it should be fairly easy to celebrate each employee individually as their birthday occurs. For a larger company, however, it would be best to pick a day once a month and celebrate all of the employees born that month.

In order to make the most of your employee celebrations, it may help to talk to your local bakery ahead of time and see what sort of promotions or deals they can offer if you’re going to be frequenting their establishment. You never know; by talking to someone at the bakery you may get a reduced price on your cake or even some extra baked goods thrown in for being a loyal customer.

Have a book exchange.

Even in this electronic age, having a good old-fashioned book exchange can help employees get to know something about their coworkers as well as keep their mind sharp. Hey, if your employees are exchanging books, they’re exchanging ideas as well.

Additionally, having employees exchange books is a great way to encourage cooperation within the company. If employees discover that they have shared areas of interest it will not only encourage them to work together, it might also encourage water cooler talk on something that isn’t weather-related. And really, we could all benefit from less weather-related chit-chat.

Set up a shooting gallery.

Obviously bringing weapons into the workplace is the flashing neon sign of “no,” so that’s not on the agenda. Using NERF guns, however, is perfectly fine. You could set up targets around the office and establish a tournament to let your employees compete with each other in order to see who has the best aim. A little bit of healthy competition like this one keeps your employees active and interested.

Have a Cornhole competition.

Cornhole is one of those games that everybody knows how to play. Depending on your available space you could either set up the boards inside the office or out in the parking lot for an additional outdoor experience.

If you don’t already own Cornhole game sets, then don’t worry. There are companies that can rent out all of the equipment you need. Just be warned though: if your employees really enjoy the competition it may not be long before you need to purchase some Cornhole game sets of your own! Semi-annual tournaments in teams can be a great way to get employees into the spirit of working together.

Raising employee morale is a great way to keep workers productive and happy at work. If you’re sure to temper fun activities with deadlines your employees will keep from being burnt-out at work and stay productive. By setting up specified times for work and times to play, you can help make the best use of company time and funds and keep your employees alert and ready for whatever the day brings.

By Jessica Velasco

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Marty Huggins

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Administrator and Chief Editor for TLB. Loves to talk. Super freak about publishing. Loves watching obscure movies, good cook and overall gentle fellow. Reach him if you want to write an article for TLB. Email him on marty@thelocalbrand.com