A thought about productivity. Or, more importantly, coffee.
It’s often been said that you need to spend money to make money, which is generally considered by most as more than just an adage but a fact. But with a general downturn in the economy worldwide, at what point does cutting down on spending start costing a company the very profits they’re looking to protect?
The heart of any business is the people working there. And the point I’m trying to address is staff morale, and how that impacts on your overall productivity and the bottom line. When you downsize your staff to save on wages, are you losing more than just a set of hands to do your bidding? The effect ripples through your staff like a wave, other people become fearful for their jobs, they start looking at other job prospects and any trace of passion they have for their work can start to falter.
Sure these are relatively small disruptions, caused by cutting loose a certainly sizeable expense, but what about the smaller things? What about company sponsored social events? Take your staff to the pub on a friday afternoon every couple of months, hold a 10-pin-bowling tournament, buy everybody a take-away lunch once a month. By promoting a social interaction between your staff you’re encouraging them to work as a team in more than just a professional sense, they become eachothers social peers, even friends. One thing that can definitely be said of human beings, is that they yearn for the approval of their peers, and even more, their friends.
Wouldn’t you work that much harder if you knew that your friends were there beside you, patting you on the back for your successes and sticking up for you during your failures?
But look even closer, at the even smaller things, a few beers tossed back in the relaxed last hour of the last day of the week will cost you no more than a few dollars per person, and allows people to look at work as somewhere they enjoy being, rather than just somewhere that they show up to earn a paycheck.
And for god sake. Don’t forget the coffee. If your contribution to a productive environment is buying a more expensive brand of freeze dried instant coffee, you just don’t get it, and maybe you never will. Give the people what they want, hot, free-flowing, legal stimulants, in ready supply.
You can’t socialize around the water cooler, if your company doesn’t provide one.
We love good coffee