4 tips for boosting office atmosphere

All work and no play seriously affects productivity within the team.

Long hours in the office, deadlines and time-sensitive projects generally increase the level of stress; but the lack of recreation and fun activities over time further render your teammates bored and less motivated, finally resulting in a considerable drop of productivity and negative office atmosphere.

This is why team building trips are so popular. Organizing events that include outdoor activities where your teams get together and spend time playing sports is an amazing opportunity to practice collaboration and effective techniques for strengthening the relationships. However, there are other ideas for achieving the same goal – and they do not even require leaving the office space.

We concocted a list of options which you can choose with the same aim, all achievable within the same space where you work.

Playful break room

If boosting office motivation is your primary goal, the first place to start your strategy of refreshment is the break room.

Even though it is often overlooked, this space is actually one of the key factors that influence productivity. Break rooms serve as places where employees go for a brief respite from work to unwind, reset, and charge their batteries again. Studies suggest that companies that have a place specifically designed for zoning out boost office morale as employees can relax while having their lunch breaks.

However, even if such recreational places do already exist, companies from time to time still face drops in productivity. This happens if the break rooms are uninteresting and do not generate a sense of enjoyment. To make them more entertaining, you can introduce paintings and decoration, chalkboard walls where your team can draw and write, or even bring games into play. Fun break rooms are important both for individual employees and whole teams.

Gaming night

After a stressful week of deadlines and projects, what better way to decompress than play a game or two? Or better yet, play with your teammates?

Organizing gaming nights serves to bring your team together in a new, playful way. When they are faced with exciting challenges posed by different games, they exhibit different sets of behavior than during office hours, but those skills and traits are something you can use later for work as well. Imagine this: gaming is typically considered as a pastime, something people turn to when they want to relax.

However, there are people who take gaming seriously, and they are not wrong – gaming can be quite beneficial. By introducing your teammates to a different set of challenges, they’ll use a different set of skills to solve those challenges and in a better mood. Think poker nights. Friends get together to play a round or two of poker, all the while talking, joking and discussing various topics. For your gaming nights, you can try organizing tournaments in online casino games, as the UK casino scene is booming with options for free playtime. If you run out of games (though we doubt that can happen), you can always spice it up with other games.

Brainstorming day

One of the most important things that you as a leader should do is equally appreciate each member of your team.

The idea behind this is that each member is an important part of your mechanism, so giving everyone time under the spotlights is vital. As there are heaps of work to do on a daily basis, players with the lowest rank rarely get a say in decision-making processes. Of course, you still are the boss, but giving them a chance to give their opinions can have several benefits for everyone.

The first thing that can be improved is the atmosphere among co-workers. As everyone becomes included, they start to strategize and help each other even more. Another thing is the infusion of fresh ideas – sometimes you can hear some amazing ideas that hadn’t even crossed your mind. They are a new perspective, a completely different angle to look at things.

This is why a day for brainstorming is a great option. By taking one day a month to gather with the team and just brainstorm about work-related things can positively affect both the office atmosphere, co-worker relationships and productivity of your whole team. It gets even better if you introduce chalkboard walls – then the creativity is fully unleashed.

Hype notes

These notes are not your typical motivational notes. While motivational quotes and notes do seem to be working quite nicely for millions of people every day, what we have in mind is somewhat different: hyping as a way of boosting morale.

In order to create an atmosphere where everyone feels highly motivated, one of the best ways is to introduce hyping as a method of tracking work progress. To put it simply, imagine posting hyping notes whenever someone finishes a project or even a part of it. This way, performance can be quite boosted, and other employees can be spurred to action as they’ll feel their work is appreciated and anticipated.