Productivity Momentum for Office Days
As many wedding companies transition back to “business as usual,” it may take some time to recover the team’s productivity and get back in working order. While working from home wasn’t an ideal situation, most people eventually found their flow and built routines around their remote lifestyle.
Your team might be excited to get back to hands-on collaboration, but they likely won’t favor turning in their 30-second commutes, their afternoon dog walks, and their fully-stocked fridges. It’s possible they even felt more productive in their home without the hustle and bustle of an office environment.
Whether you’re moving to a hybrid situation or you’re heading back to the office in full force, here are a few ways to ramp up the motivation and productivity throughout your team.
Add some homey touches to the office.
You might not get to work in sweatpants all day, but you can still make the office feel more comfortable for your team. Create a lounge space with plush couches and cozy blankets. Stock the fridge with easy-to-grab snacks and drinks. Level up your coffee station. Heck, we’ve used office tequila as a way to encourage team bonding and loosen the energy after a long weekend. Simply put, find a way to build in welcoming accents that entice people to return to the office.
Practice—and preach—boundary setting.
Establishing clear boundaries with one’s time creates realistic expectations about what can be accomplished and how it fits into the schedule. This is just as critical for leaders as it is for their team members, so it might involve a certain level of group accountability.
A shared Google Calendar is a great place to start for setting office hours, meetings, and deadlines, as it keeps the communication lines open and helps everyone stay on track. Outside of those shared entries, allow your team the flexibility to define the boundaries they need to be productive and achieve their goals.
Implement time-blocking strategies.
Time-blocking is a technique that supports productivity by helping us focus on the task at hand without distraction. When you feel unmotivated, it’s usually because of having too much to do (or too much that you don’t want to do). I recommend setting a timer to designate a specific time block for a task that feels unbearable.
If emails are dragging you down, commit to spending 30 minutes in your inbox — no more, no less. Then, give yourself a break on the other side. Go for a walk, grab a coffee, chat with a coworker, anything that feels like a mini-reward for doing your time. People are more inclined to be productive (and work harder) if they know there’s a payout. So give yourself one!
Give your team more space.
As we get back into the swing of things, this is not time for micromanagement. Instead, empower your employees to rediscover their flow in their own capacity. They learned a lot about their working habits at home, so let them figure out how it translates to the office.
In some cases, you may consider hybrid scheduling. For those who have proven to be productive from home, give them the option to schedule certain remote days. There should still be check-in points for accountability, but allow them the grace to ease back into the hustle and bustle so they can give you their best.
Assign mental health hours for employees.
When your employees have a chance to take care of their personal well-being, they will be in a better headspace to be productive and produce excellent results. Consider supporting them by allocating specific hours of each week for them to focus on self-improvement and mental health. Perhaps they are taking a course for a certification, or maybe they need to see a therapist or doctor. There are no questions asked; you are simply allowing them to take time to be humans.
Giving them those hours each week removes the pressure and guilt of “taking off,” while showing that you genuinely care about their wellbeing. If you can’t afford to lose your team all at once, you can stagger the time blocks to ensure you’re covered. For example, someone may be off Tuesday afternoons, while another gets to have a late start on Thursday mornings. It’s worth mentioning that you deserve this time off, too!
The pandemic has been a collectively emotional experience. Many of us learned how an emotional toll plays into productivity, and now we have the opportunity to use that knowledge to grow our business and care for our teams. Give your employees grace. Give yourself grace. Do not hold yourself to the standards of 2019, or even what you plan to do in 2024. Focus on where you are right at this moment. You’ve serviced two years of clients in one year. And look at you: You’re still standing and that’s good enough.
Hustle + Gather is a training and consulting firm that is on a mission to inspire others to take big leaps, dream big dreams, and create amazing teams that grow profits and an enjoyable (but productive) culture within business. They specialize in the hospitality industry and have coached and trained businesses to increase their profitability while creating a kick ass team along the way.
