Episode 5, A cheerful workplace, make it simple but profound

Whenever you decide to make your workplace a cheerful one, you have some choices to make. In the previous chat chat we had explained about the pros and cons of an official declaration of a project to spread cheerfulness in the workplace.. You might get momentum and support at the beginning. However when the project is delivered and later cheerfulness turns to be an additional duty, the fake smiles would fade out. An alternative to the top-bottom approach was to organize your project as a cultural change.

Cultural changes require a bottom-up approach where the individual are in the focus of the project. You tackle the obstacles that prevents light from the work environment. This will allow heaviness to be lightened up and give a chance for the cheerfulness light shades to brighten the image. Anyhow any change has an implicit cultural part that need to be tackled. The team members are the heart of any change. They are crucial stakeholders of the change. They are going to apply the change with all the struggles, effort, tension and attention needed for the new starts.

How to start a simple colorful and profound change?

Like anything new, to gain acceptance it need to appeal to the users. There are small changes that can root it self deep subconsciously. Long time ago, producing black and white printouts where dominating due the high cost of producing colored material. This was typical in the daily reports, handouts and similar products. To have it colored you need to invest in it. Nowadays, it is hard to find printed material used. It all soft material on your computer and mobile screen. Now to make it appealing science plays a role to explain the psychology of colors. e.g. Blue calls an air of calmness as it is linked to the sky and green  is associated with refreshment and peace, rest and security as it is linked to nature.

Consequently, Think about making those colors prominent in your daily reports, in your email theme and even around your desk. Subconsciously you are offering you colleagues a moment of calmness and peace. When feeling calm and peace you can respond positively to a cheerful stimulator. We had designed our maintenance and Google sheets training around those themes. So you can have a learning medium full of peace, growth and wellbeing.

Selecting colors that prepares a ground for spreading cheerfulness is a simple but a profound change that will run forever.

A second example:

A similar simple but profound change can be from the lighting. Natural sunlight lighting is great but many workplaces can’t provide it. Some workplaces have technical reasons to block it as it affect the process or the safe vision. While others doesn’t have the opportunity to allow sunlight, natural lighting or even fresh air to arrive to all the workplaces. Either ways, craft the crew rest time and the locations for serving foods to force their exposure to natural lighting and fresh air.

Giving attention to the things you care about is a key factor in its growth and in maintaining it healthy. So, thinking, asking, chatting, creating demos and, being attentive to the feedback and reaction give you a chance to see alternatives. Let’s demystify it with another example from life.

Cheerfulness Lessons from plantations

On the other hand, implanting light seeds within the workplace brings subtle but profound results. At any point of time you may come across the bless of planting a seed and watching it growing over the weeks and months. You can see how it was weak in the first few days of sprouting. Even it barely had any roots. Over the next days you gain hope that it will continue to grow when you see that a second pair of leaves appearing. After that it develops root that you can’t see. During your daily care for it, you only have hopes that it is doing well. You might start reading about that, asking friends and spreading positive vibes about it. Later on, when it is the right season and environment condition you can see a rapid growth and flourishing after sometime of dormancy while establishing roots.

Same occurs when you think about using cuttings to have another plantation. It is not far from welcoming a new member in you team. After making the cutting from the old mature plant, usually you place it in water. For days and weeks you have nothing but hopes that it will develop roots. You may use growth hormone or other supporting chemicals or naturals extracts. After you are happy with the developed roots, you need to transfer it to a pot or to you garden. It continue to suffer to get accommodated with the new environment. Then it starts to grow and flourish.

Those plantation cycles apply for any new idea we need to develop for ourselves, within our team or across the working place. They all need to develop roots to grow. The small consistent change then turn to be profound.

In Conclusion,

Any change in the workplace invokes the need for a cultural change. The introducing of some cheerful breeze can be considered a change to the workplace environment. However, there are two routes to introduce this change. Either, it is officially adopted and associated with targets and follow up. Or it is facilitated like the lights of the early dawn or the smell of a fresh cup of coffee. Small changes that lasts create more profound changes into the workplace culture. We had chatted about coloring the interfaces in a way that carries deep calm, refreshing and peace scents to the scene. Also, crafting the daily routine to include a glimpse of natural lighting and fresh air boosts the basic needs of Maslow’s pyramid. Those basic needs are the minimums that you can build a cheerful workplace over them.

You can reed more about the hierarchy of needs in the below link:

• Manager’s role to support the hierarchy of needs