Everyone is bored at work… except for elves

Unless you are Santa Claus and your employees are toy building elves, it seems unlikely that there aren’t moments when your employees are bored at work. The sad reality is that the majority of employees aren’t being motivated well enough. With the saturation of online businesses and small companies springing up, business owners need to be aware of the positive benefits of having a well motivated and hard working staff. While this fact may seem obvious to the business owner or president, websites like “i-am-bored.com” and “bored.com” only serve to prove that something is missing in the work environment.

Statistics Canada states that many work absences are directly correlated with instances of boredom at work. When workers are completing repetitive tasks or do not feel challenged enough in their work environment, they become more prone to taking personal days. This lowers your business’ return on investment (ROI) and deceases your opportunity to get the most done in a day.

Although, as the boss, you can not always completely remove boredom from the office, there are a few steps you can take in order to encourage motivation and get your staff excited about working.

What is the Answer?

- Pay Attention and Give Recognition. This seems absurd to mention, but the more attention and “atta-boys” you give out to your staff, the harder they’ll want to work for you. People work harder when they feel as though they’ll receive attention for their hard-work.

- Spend Time One-on-One. Calling an employee up into your office, or dropping them a personal email creates a connection between you and your employee. If you show them you’re interested in them as a person and an employee they are more likely to remain loyal and work harder.

- Set Goals and Give Rewards. Even if you don’t have the resources to give your staff raises, there are always other rewards. Organize a staff lunch or set up an incentive program. If you set realistic goals and reward those who complete them, you’ll spark healthy competition and motivate your staff to get the job done.

- Training. Constantly updating your staffs’ training will ensure that your employees are qualified and keeping busy. If you ensure that your employees are gaining new skills, they can update you on what your company needs to move forward.

- Encouraging Leadership. When you give your employees a leadership role, you keep them busy as well as give them a sense of participation in the success of the business. Encouraging leadership roles also helps delegate workloads and ensures work is being completed according to schedule.

Let’s face it, you’ll never be as awesome as Santa Claus and you’ll probably never have 100% motivated and enthusiastic elf-like employees every day, but it doesn’t mean you can’t try. Give extra coffee to those employees looking burned out and hold meetings to discuss progress. Remember, the more boring the office setting is, the more hits websites like bored.com will be receiving. It’s up to you to create a stimulating work environment for your employees.

And hey, if you still can’t get the boredom out of your employees, maybe a kidnapping trip to the North Pole would be a good idea…

The Advertising Experiment

This is Mike.

Mike is a talented graphic designer here at Starmedia.

Every now and then Mike gets frustrated.

So, I was thinking to myself that graphic designers are sort of behind the scenes and people often don't even think or appreciate the amount of work that designers have to put in to make customers look good. They deserve to get some attention. Ergo, I thought I would involve one of them in my new hair-brained experiment. One of my coworkers, Jimmy Jet, drew this picture of Mike, our designer, during one of our daily meetings and I thought, can you make an ad out of anything? Let's find out.

Therefore... the Advertising Experiment 2007.

How to participate: You take this drawing of Mike and do whatever you'd like to it to turn it into an advertisement. You can advertise anything you'd like, but it has to look good and serve to potentially sell your product or service. Submit a tagline to go below this drawing or create Mike a slogan if you'd like. Be creative! It can say anything you'd like, but it has to "advertise" something. Have some fun.

The Rules: You can submit as many original "ads" as you'd like. You can even change the image to suit your needs, but the original picture has to be somewhere in your advertisement. Email me your advertisements to kate@starmedia.ca

The Duration: May 31 - June 14, 2007

What you "win": While this isn't a contest per se, I would love to see what people come up with, so I will post the top 10 "Mike ads" up along with your blog's URL. You get some extra traffic and we all get to see some interesting advertisements.

Have a great Thursday. I'll be adding another advertising advice post soon.

-Kate

I Owe, I Owe, It’s off to Work I Go

(Image thanks to www.crazy-jokes.com)

There's a great blog series going on called THE WORKPLACE SURVIVAL DIALOG. This is my contribution to that interesting subject. Check it out and feel free to add your own! :)

Well I was planning on writing a daring and often dramatic article about the workplace and how work ethics have drastically dropped over the last few days, but I got a bit bogged down with strange and unnecessary statistics which, while amusing, did not really back up my entire strongly worded thesis. So I’m going to play it “cool” and just discuss the issue lightly and see what happens. Hopefully if I ask a question it will intrigue you all enough to add your own thoughts and experiences because I imagine most of you can relate. So here goes: How often do you take a personal day from work? I know I said I wouldn’t bog this article down with statistics, but these few were just too good to resist. Thank you to Statistics Canada.

Warning: For all you fellow workaholics out there, these statistics may shock and appall you.

Estimates from the Labour Force Survey show that both the incidence and the number of days lost for personal reasons (illness or disability, and personal or family responsibilities) have shown a rising trend since 1997. Several factors have contributed: notably, an aging workforce; the growing share of women in the workforce, especially mothers with young children; high worker stress; and more generous sick- and family-related leave benefits.

Full-time employees in the public sector (more likely unionized or female) lost more work time in 2006 for personal reasons (about 13 days on average) than their private-sector counterparts (8.8 days).

So what does this say about our society? I think it’s interesting that although Statistics Canada lists “high worker stress” as a factor for missing work, they also note that our society has a “more generous sick- and family-related leave benefits.” So we attempt to pacify our stress-induced work environment with additional benefits to make it seem less terrible. When I was in Greece last spring, it was hard not to notice the unbelievably laid-back work environment. People there are more likely to show up late, close early and take a long, long lunch break then us in North America. Granted their country is not nearly as “successful” as the U.S., but hey, they’ve been around longer than pretty much anyone else, so really, maybe they’ve got something right after all.

Here in North America we work long days, we don’t have siesta like other countries and we carry our cell phones around like trophies. We try to fit way too much into a day and we convince ourselves that if we don’t have the most amount of money then we’re doing something wrong. Every now and then we flip right out and need a few “personal days” to regain ourselves and start it all over again. Oh and just as an additional little joy, we also have higher instances of allergies and stress-related illnesses than other countries. What is the point?

I personally believe that MORE people would take LESS personal days if work wasn’t so much of a chore… if we had long siestas and just met everyone at 3PM at the local pub for a drink… if the focus was truly on family and people instead of on products and finances. I think we could encourage productivity while supporting a sense of community.

I’m proud to say that I love my job, but it’s not my entire world. I think that half the reason why I love it is because I feel at home here. I stay after work for drinks, I come in early for breakfast and I consider my co-workers friends. What’s great about it is that I learn more because of the sense of community than I would in a huge company where I would just fade into the background. I’m a copywriter, but I’ve picked up HTML and some design tricks and even SEO. I think you learn best from watching other people and from asking questions and building relationships. It’s something we all need to learn from the Greeks.

What do you think about the differences between the two cultures? Do you think we have personal days because we’re burned out and have too much to do in a day, or is the rise from something else? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Drop me a note.

-Kate