Fostering a Summer Vibe in the Workplace

Fostering a Summer Vibe in the Workplace

Literature review on fun activities that are often applied in organizations as a method to boost the morale of the teams. Such efforts can also help improve team spirit, workforce productivity, as well as attitudinal orientation in the workplace during the summertime.

This will be achieved by scheduling independent entertaining exercises that will entail what the team needs and what the environment is capable of offering in terms of exercises. Here are several ideas that might be valuable to kick off your thinking process. It is possible to categorize the ideas according to such aspects or dimensions:

1. Outdoor Team Building Activities

Picnic and Games: To give work to many people, one can invite them to work for the company, for instance, in a park, entertaining the company’s guests during the party. It is on this note that an invitation to employees is granted to be followed by their families and come up with entertaining events such as unique races such as sack race, tug-war and frisbee among others. It fosters people to socialize outside work and even enhances the bonds of fellowship such as my softball team.

Scavenger Hunt: Some of the initiatives include the identification of the development of a scavenger hunt out of which some of the search activities may include searches within the neighborhood, or the compound of the company’s workspace. It entails strategizing and the game requires solving clues to find an item whereby each team has to find; this helps boost togetherness among the team members.

Sports Tournaments: Examples are football, basketball, tennis, inter-company bowling, soccer, volleyball, or softball games, mini-pal, and SOPs. These activities encourage group work and competition hence promoting physical activity exercise among students.

Nature Hike or Walk: Grab a group hiking trip or even a simple stroll in the natural surroundings of the woods. Here, it can be noted that the pressure is lifted slightly from the regular work of an office environment and at the same time it can be taken as a healthy change

2. Indoor Team Building Activities

Escape Room Challenge: They should consider organizing a team-building trip to an escape room. This activity is valid for interdependence, interaction, and problem solving since participants must work in teams to solve activities and escape from a room within a given period.

Office Olympics: It would also be helpful to establish an activity-based contingency plan that consists of a series of lighter, shorter tasks that could be completed throughout the day. These are popular because they may involve races, such as the ‘desk chair race,’ or fantastic flying objects like the ‘paper aeroplane battle,’ or even bearing with asset-challenging games like office trivia. This could be such a good way to bring competitiveness into the workplace and make it a little bit more fun.

Creative Workshops: Suggest activities like painting, cooking, pottery, etc., so that such students could find interest in joining a particular club. They help the team's idea flow and develop members’ creative skills at the same time.

3. Virtual Team Building Activities

Virtual Trivia Night: Develop a virtual trivia night nights with different categories. This could also be a good and amusing method to get several offices with several employees to come together.

Online Escape Room: As with the physical version, other online escape rooms can allow a team to brainstorm on G Suite tools and as a team, make their escape before the given time expires.

Virtual Happy Hours: Have team meetings in the form of virtual calls of cocktails whereby team members can sit back and have a drink and talk about nothing in particular. Make sure that themes or games to play are included in the conversation to provide the spirit of fun.

Wellness Challenges: Remind the decentralised team to engage in wellness activities including steps taken water drunk or minutes spent’ taken daily. To report the progress and also to follow the achievements made in the process so far.

4. In-Office Morale Boosting Ideas

Theme Days: Establish a specific dress code for a week, like wearing Hawaiian shirts on Wednesday, clothing accessories on Thursday, or 90s clothing on Friday. It is possibly interesting to note that these can give light-heartedness in the normal working days and bring along topics of discussions and jokes.

Office Decorations: It is suggested to do it to give a summer look to the office. It will be beneficial to incorporate items such as the beach ball; sunglasses; the tropical plants to enhance the festive mood of the design.

Ice Cream Socials: Hold an ice cream social where people can drop by on a particular afternoon and enjoy some ice cream. Offer employees a variety of flavours such as chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry and toppings such as whipped cream, nuts, etc, and allow employees to make their sundae.

Lunchtime Yoga: Organise yoga or meditation sessions during lunchtime to enable participants to be rejuvenated before resuming work. These activities are likely to help decrease stress

5. Low morale is a problem that persists in most organizations, and there are several affordable ways of solving the issue if implemented appropriately

Recognition Programs: Zeitlin suggests that the organization should adopt a recognition program that allows employees to recognize and recommend their fellow employees for best performance. It does not always require a grand incentive or a gimmick to make one’s day; even a simple compliment can serve as a morale booster.

Potluck Lunches: Allow and encourage employees to bring in their ‘favourite foods from home’ and share them with other workers on a particular day, perhaps through holding potluck lunches. This not only reduces costs but also lets them share some part of their identity or the world they live in.

Flexible Work Hours: Renegotiate preferred working hours or implement scheduling where employees can work from home if they can. This way, management has been proven to delegate the matter of control over schedules and flexibility at work to give many employees a better work-life balance and morale.

Personal Development Time: Spend at least 30 minutes of the day pursuing an interest, learning something new through reading or enrolling in an online class or working on a favourite hobby. This paper points out that the organization needs to spend resources on the career progression of employees to improve satisfaction with work.

6. Morale-Boosting Activities For Teachers

Appreciation Events: Organize activities to show the teachers some love and recognition for the hard work they do, for example, a teachers’ fun day or a star teachers’ food fest.

Peer Recognition Boards: Encourage the teachers to put positive comments about their peers or even commend them publicly through the wall of fame.

Wellness Programs: This is the case since they need to be provided with teacher training in wellness programs to be implemented in schools such as stress management classes, fitness sessions, and focus on breathing exercises.

Classroom Swap: Host a cross-class day in which teachers move from one class to another, and in turn deliver a lesson to the new class. This can help one to obtain different inspiring insights and to come out of the monotonous cycle.

7. Happiness At the Workplace During The Pandemic: The Possibility

Virtual Team Building: Due to social distancing it may be probable to spend less time meeting people in person, therefore it is valuable to encourage virtual team building activities such as games, quizzes, group projects etc.

Care Packages: At home care, you may think of using gifts such as snacks, company-branded regalia and encouraging messages. This is done to show you value him or her and hence strengthen or maintain the relationship.

Virtual Learning: Provide online courses on specialized fields that interest people at the workplace, colleges and universities or trades and hobbies.

Regular Check-Ins: SCHWER – weekly virtual meetings: encourage the participants to remain in touch with each other every week and share about their work progress, as well as personal well-being.

Also Read: What Is Workplace Anxiety? Simple Tips To Manage And Overcome Anxiety At Work

8. Implementing The Activities

Although humour can be quite risky and sensitive, several measures can be put in place to ensure that it is achieved successfully.

Gather Feedback: To prevent boredom, get your group to recommend interesting activities that they like doing so that the program does not become repetitive.

Diverse Options: Doing this provides multiple types of activities for different members of the team as well as preferences.

Promote Inclusivity: Make sure that all the happenings are open to all people and those that have a disability or any type of barrier that might limit them from participating.

Regular Scheduling: The availability of activities in a regular manner will sustain effective morale so morale-boosting should not be done periodically.

Encourage Participation: The participants should be encouraged to participate and one way of doing this is to conduct the training in a positive tone and using positive words. Give every participant a token gift, candy, pen, etc., for coming forth and being involved in the meetings

Evaluate and Adjust: Therefore, when implementing each of the activities, it is crucial to see whether it was successful and gather feedback. It may guide future actions to enhance