7 Ways to Build Muscle and Teamwork in the Office

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We often spend more than a third of each day at the office. That’s a lot of time to often be sitting at a desk or in front of a computer. It’s to our advantage to make those hours more active not only for our health, but for our professional life, too. Even simple activities like walking help to get blood and creative juices flowing. If your office has a gym, definitely use it. Get some colleagues together for a workout or walking group and make it your own recurring ‘meeting.’

Here are 7 more ways you can get active and build office camaraderie while you’re at it:

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About the Author

Shana Schneider is a fitness expert and founder of FITWEEK™, a fitness company that helps women turn every week into a FITWEEK™. As a “FitStylist” with a busy schedule herself,Shana helps women incorporate individual fitness into their everyday lifestyle by providing unique insights, tips, advice and how-to videos through her FITWEEK™ website.

Why Our Employees Asked Us To Stop Giving Away Cars

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Easy-to-implement ideas to improve your corporate culture and drive employee engagement

 
We gave a new car away to our employees every other month, six cars in total, to keep the motivation and excitement up among our best performing sales agents. We were really impressed with ourselves and wanted to know what else we could do to improve the happiness factor. We sent out a survey (which we still do today) to ask our employees about the cleanliness, the temperature in the building, the security, the lighting, the management, the pay, the incentives, the likelihood that they’d leave if another company offered them more money, all-in-all we had about twenty five questions. Two months later the same survey showed that the work space was cleaner, the building temperature more comfortable, the security better, the lights brighter, the managers more helpful, the pay was better, our incentive plan produced better results, and less of our employees would leave for more money.

How did we manage to change our employees’ perception and why did they want us to stop giving away cars?

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About the Author

Craig Handley is a networking monster with an unstoppable combination of hard work, ingenuity, and creativity that has sparked the vision and growth that drives the success of Listen Up Español. Craig’s expertise in maximizing the sales process – and Listen Up Español’s impressive track record of higher conversion rates and higher average order value than any other Spanish language call center – was achieved from the ground up, having started his professional career in door-to-door sales and rising through the ranks in many call centers. He is well known for being an entrepreneur who lives and breathes the Maverick motto: “Make More Money, Have More Fun, and Give More Back.”

Breathing Life Into Your Values-Based Culture

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What does your company’s culture look like? Can you clearly define it and how it contributes to the overall success of your business? Could your culture benefit from some special attention? Throughout my 25 year career, I’ve admired certain companies that consistently outshine their competition. What is their secret ingredient? I’ve arrived at an undeniable conclusion? company culture.

But when it comes to building and establishing that culture, where do you start? I’ve learned that one of the most essential steps is determining the difference between your company’s priorities and values. Priorities are the day-to-day demands of our jobs. They can shift and change constantly. In contrast, values are the glue that bind us together. Our values must not change; they are non-negotiable. Our daily decisions are grounded in our values, and the key is discovering what is most important to us. I learned where my values lied when I was working for a former employer. My boss was a headstrong individual who would lock in on an idea, lobby some employees to join his cause, then push his ideas on everyone else until he got his way. His behaviors led to some ill-conceived and financially dangerous decisions.

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About the Author

Brian Fielkow is the author of Driving to Perfection: Achieving Business Excellence by Creating a Vibrant Company Culture and owner of Jetco Deliver. in Houston, Texas. He and has presented to thousands of people across the country on how to establish a healthy culture. To continue the conversation, contact Brian at [email protected], and learn more at drivingtoperfection.com.

What Your Office Says About Your Company (And Why You Should Care)

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If there is one thing we have learned through the economic twists and turns of the past decade, it is that people make our companies run. Even at the depths of the economic downturn with the high unemployment rate of 9.9 percent, there were 3.8 million jobs in the US that went unfilled for more than six months and that problem only gets worse as unemployment drops. Consequently, attracting and retaining high quality employees is ‘job one’ in 2014. Is it any wonder that CEO’s and their HR departments, are scanning the horizon for any new idea to help fill those positions? Enter stage left, the open office concept.

The open office concept has its detractors and there is actually much to be said for the traditional office with its spaces for privacy, learning, and focused work, but an open office strategy, when thoughtfully deployed can create environments that support employee attraction and retention.

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About the Author

Kristine WoolseyKristine Woolsey is a business strategist, speaker, and author. She is a transition specialist, helping organizations reshape themselves during times of change including mergers, extreme growth, and adaption to today’s changing workplace. She works at the intersection of organizational behavior, brand alignment, and facilities. She guides leaders to understand the power of leveraging natural behavior patterns using research based strategies with measurable results.

Kristine was trained as an architect and then moved into the business arena. Now, she teaches and speaks about the future of work and behavioral strategy to groups and conferences nationally. Kristine consults for medium to large companies, helping business leaders use behavioral strategies to adjust their value proposition, identity/brand, organization structure, and facilities to create the most direct path through any organizational transformation. For more information visit: www.kristinewoolsey.com.

The Evolution of Enterprise Social Collaboration

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organizational collaborationEnterprise social collaboration tools can be a powerful means to support employees in their daily business, also helping them foster cross-company collaboration. This infographic from AgreeYa Solutions provides a comprehensive introduction to the world of enterprise social collaboration. Review the illustration to learn more about enterprise social collaboration and how it can enhance business-wide productivity.

The image to the right is just a small snippet of the whole infographic. Click here to download a full-size version of this infographic.