Initiatives to Foster a More Creative Environment Where Fun Can Enhance Productivity - Article Example

Name Course Institution Date Title Initiatives to foster a more creative environment where fun can enhance productivity Introduction Of all business resources, personnel/ human resource is the most valued asset of any organization. Meaning for any organization to stand above others in the present competition, it must build an added advantage in human resource management. Continued workers empowerment as key role of company’s human resources core objective would enhance innovation, creativity and continued improvement in production and encourages employee royalty. Working in environment with high morale and job satisfaction is more likely to produce reliable, high quality and affordable products. One of current challenges facing personnel management is building creative environment where fun enhance productivity. High performing companies such as Google, Microsoft are viable example to illustrate that fun increases productivity and morale by stimulating creativity and cooperation. Fun is believed to flatten the working field between everyone such that the entire community is involved in generating useful ideals. From the experience of the successful companies where fun is encouraged presently other organization have realized the important role played by fun and are trying best to incorporate it in their workplace. One can create environment where fun can enhance productivity by the following initiatives. Dress freedom or no Dress code. In the 21st century people especially the youth are not conscious of dressing code. Traditionally workers in formal employment wear official clothes such as suits through out their career. Today official dressing does not appeal to many youth; they do not feel comfortable in suits all year round. Hence eliminating dress code and allowing employees to dress what they think fits them best would promote fun and encourage productivity. However to promote decency and moral in dressing less restriction should be enforced to ensure workers put on moral clothes. For instance start instituting casual dress on any day of the week one likes. Allowing people to change into or out of a set of clothes in the middle of working day is stimulating. If all these arrangement are not possible during the working days, then casual Friday would make a difference. Company sponsored trip, events and retreats. At end of each day, week, month etc, workers are tired and worn out and hence it’s good to offer them recreation allowances. Modern analysis of human resource emphasizes that human beings are not commodities or resources but are creative and social being in productive enterprise (Karoly & Constantijn 228). Therefore care must be taken when dealing with human beings in place of work. Companies have and still sponsor end year closing parties where employees come together eat, talk and laugh. Again other organizations have organized trips where everyone in that organization travel and make fan and discuss business issues at a relaxed environment free from work. Parties, retreats and even flattens the playing fielding making everyone free to communicate and generate ideals that build the organization. Moreover company can allow worker to relax and create ideas each day. For example each employee takes few of the day’s minutes alone and thinks. And in this case he or she is not thinking something particular but just thinking. Allow worker to walk and stroll around the organization premises. Go and sit on a bench within the company’s premises without carrying any working tool; just to relax. Leave phone and blackberries in office desk and think while sitting on the bench. You will find that each time a worker thinks while outside there he or she will have an idea and by the end of the day one would have generated either little or big idea and had fun at the same time. Hopefully an organization would be able to create fun, ideals and retain talents. Solicit open lines of communication. Open line of communication promotes flat playing grounds as subordinate can freely talk to their bosses with no fear or intimidation. With open communication employer is able to know whether his employees feel challenged, overwhelmed or satisfied (Peter & Buttigieg, 124). Again with clear cut communication channels, management meet wholly with their employee on regular basis and ask important questions. In this fun is created as well employers are able to know the plights of employees and action taken early enough for good of the organizations. It’s quite fun to meet, talk, laugh and share ideals with your bosses often without necessary following a lengthy channel or process. Training and make goal achievable New recruits to any organization require some training to make them conversant with organization structure, job description and any other job related ideals. Make these training camps more like boot camp than business school and employees will enjoy. Equipping workers with necessary skill does not only create competence and ability or makes that person to be more create but also creates fun. How would it feel working in an environment in which you know relatively nothing or you have fewer ideals? It would be hectic thing but it would be joyous, fun to do job with ease since you know what is required of the job. In addition make goals achievable. Provide employees with what they need to met goals including staffing, departmental support and necessary technology. Allow flexibility in time. Allow employees make their own hours. Organization should give its workers some flexibility in their work schedules in order to strike balance between work and family. In addition allowing workers to work from their home often can motivate making days in the office a lot more productive and less stressful. Or if not so create room for mothers and fathers to bring their young daughters and son with them to workplace. Less stressed people are more creative and work better with others. If productivity of any organization relies on new ideals then workers should remain happy (Andrew et al 17). Individuals in good mood are likely to have creative ideals nearly everyday. Psychologists believe that when individuals are feeling good they are more flexible, fluent and original thinking. Hence flextime promotes not only creativity but also fun. Erecting a Piece of Gymnastic Equipment in the Office Physical activities are a top item in enhancing fun at any level or age of the human resource. As a matter of fact, the more physical activities that an individual engages in, the livelier the individual gets (Dalton 135). Happy and lively individuals are bound to present more perfectly the company results in meetings. By simply erecting an armature of a donkey along the way between two departments would be fair enough. This would force individuals moving between the two departments to jump over the armature. The main objective would be to relieve tension among the staff members as they will be laughing at each other as they jump over the donkey. The cheap methodology would have helped a long way in enhancing the physical ability of the employees. They will be progressively physically fit hence more productive around the office. They will be free to involve in feared physical activities in their effort to create more innovative products. Unlike in the present situation when most of the office holders sit from morning to evening, they would get more means to cheer up when they are away from their seats. Incentive to Timeliness Motivation of the employees is the surest ways to reaching them. Understanding them fully helps the employer in his attempt to unfold the barriers between the employees and their fun at the workplace. Punctuality in our organization is maintained by threats from the authority. We are not unique from a vast majority of the companies around this business environment. Human resource is better at performing when under motivation rather than when under threats. Instead of threatening people with demotion letters when late to work or even sacking letters after repetitively developing the trend, the organization would be better adapting incentives. For incentives to be effective, they need to be recognizable by most people and offered frequently Emmerich and Hall 59). This calls for cheap but highly shouting incentives. It was after a consideration of these underlying factors that settling on offering reserved parking space for the top managers to the smaller employees as a way of rewarding punctuality. This would in a more productive way motivate the employees to report early to work and attend to their duties early enough which give them more time to come up with better and more creative working methods for higher production. Lightening Up Meetings All the employees are provided with the greatest opportunities to contribute to the company through meetings that are never kindly taken by vastly all of them. Through meetings the employees have the chance to learn new working skills that they can implement in their daily operations to improve on their creativity and eventually production. On the other hand, employees have the chance to contribute to the management vital issues from their sky high talents that could in an instant turn things around in the company. These desired effects of meeting are never seen since the meetings are just characterized with the boring talks from the managers as the employees do the strict listening. Making the meetings lively can really change the perception it receives from the employees. Starting meetings with the ‘Sing-A-Longs’ where the whole staff engages in singing quit a simple and familiar song instead of the over used and bureaucratic (Fry and Fischer 17) methods. This helps release all tension and help the employees get ready for a jovial meeting. Game show events in between the meeting are vital in unleashing the moral and creativity from the employees. Such like short termed games can be used by the employer to identify various talents in their employees which can be used to develop ideas for the better management and performance of the company against their competitors. Redesigning Jobs Levels of redundancy have been reported to be unavoidable from employees after long terms of service. Employees tend to rot in their respective areas of specialization. The employee feels less challenged in his area hence boredom creeps in leading to highly predictable and low performances (Bruce 54). The employees are not ready to work any hard to prove themselves as capable. Switching people from one job to another maintains the companies at the high spirits of trying to out do each other. The current employee at a certain station will be working tirelessly hard to set high standards that would be difficult for the next person to outdo. On the other hand, the company can try a hand in revising the job descriptions as often as possible. This eliminates the levels of familiarity with the job. When job specifications are redesigned time and again, the employees tend to work their head out into determining more advanced methods of coping up with the fast changing conditions and challenges presented by the job. Interest is also maintained as boredom finds its way out off the company. Conclusion It is a sad state that the highly productive method of obtaining the quality from the human resource in terms of their creativity and innovative skills is not receiving the deserved attention in our company. An analysis at the macro level of the issue brings to realization the fact that only 29% of the companies in the state are applying the method. A deeper scrutinizing brings to notification of the only 8% of companies as using fun as a way of reducing stress levels in their employees. As the paper outlines, research from the California State University backs strongly the fact that people who experience more fun are at higher notch compared to their fellow employees who are dull. They are more productive, work cooperatively with others and rarely use sickness excuse to miss work. Our company would therefore be at a better place adopting fun as part of their human employment policies. Works Cited Andrew Harrison, Paul Wheeler and Carolyn Whitehead. The distributed workplace: sustainable work environments. London: Spon Press 2004 page 17 Bruce, A. Building a high moral workplace. California: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2002. Dalton, A. Safety, health and environmental hazards at the workplace. L.A, Cengage Learning EMEA, 2003. Emmerich, R & Hall, R. Thanks God It’s Monday! How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love. Boston: FT Press, 2009. Fry, A & Fischer, T. Make Work Fun. California: Krug Industries, Inc., 2003. Karoly Lynn A. and Constantijn W. A. Panis. The 21st century at work: forces shaping the future workforce and workplace. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation 2004. 228 Peter G. Gahan and Buttigieg Donna M. “The HR - Performance Relationship and the Social Context of Work: The Role of Workplace Climate” Working Paper Series Monash University. (2008) 124 Read More