Workspace Hacks – Revamp Your Coworker Community
Many of us will spend a large portion of our days at work. In fact, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime. For most of that time, you work alongside other people from different ages, skills, and backgrounds. At times, you may even spend more time with your coworkers than you will with your family. This makes building positive relationships with the people you work with a must, since there’s plenty to learn from our coworkers, and it all starts with finding a productive way to coexist and collaborate. The next time you’re engaged with your colleagues, keep in mind these few work culture hacks to promote a more progressive coworker community.
Why Coworker Communities Matter
It’s Good For Business
All companies want engaged employees, and when you and your coworkers are in sync, your efforts compound to go above and beyond the minimum that’s required to complete a task. Building room for employee interaction becomes a space to energize employees to want to come to work, increasing the overall productivity and employee engagement for your business.
Create Healthy Work Relationships
According to an article by Art Markman for Harvard Business Review, coworkers should be treated like neighbors, not family. Fostering a “neighbor” relationship with your colleagues increases employee engagement and shifts the balance for what all parties in the working relationship can offer each other. Workers who have this mindset build bonds when everyone shares a common vision and agrees to do what they can to work toward these common interests.
Handle Any Situation
Dealing with coworkers is a job in and of itself, and sometimes you’ll run into a few challenging situations that may result in uncomfortable tension or decreased productivity. Whether it be disengagement, friction, or underlying assumptions among certain colleagues, getting close to these situations and addressing the issues with coworkers can lead to improvements in workplace culture and operations for the business.
Develop Career Opportunities
A healthy workplace with neighbor-like employees and leaders working together creates an honest and open place to work. It’s not all about saving face or looking good when pleasing your colleagues, but when your goal is to make others more successful, you’ll grow as an individual performer, as a professional, and as a part of the team. This opens multiple doors for individuals who eye for career progression and new opportunities, as success can often have a ripple effect throughout the business.
Focus on your Character and Work
Being self-aware of the spaces you create with your coworkers can make or break a business. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Have a shared purpose to create a community that benefits the people who work there. Help demonstrate that the organization cares about your colleagues and remind them at times of their connection to the broader mission.
- Be willing to help others succeed and grow in their careers, as they may do the same for you. This is based on the concept of reciprocity, and according to Robert Cialdini – the author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – helping others to advance their goals first is the key for coworker communities. The trick lies in how you go about it.
- Stick to the projects and purpose at hand, and avoid talking about subjects irrelevant to your true work to your coworkers.
- Set boundaries for your coworkers, as knowing when to say yes can mean a great deal to your coworkers’ view of you.
Work in a Positive Environment
New office designs are becoming more open, with layouts meant to cater to the variety of tasks required of modern workers. People resonate with the energy that fills these offices. Your coworkers may often notice the smaller things that happen at the office and can vibe off that energy accordingly. Every touchpoint, whether it be how you address an email response or how you say your greetings, can go a long way to improve the moods of other employees. Enable more collaboration next time you’re in the lunchroom, similar to how Google retains their open and free cafeteria.
Doing great work cannot be seen by most other employees, but it’s best to assume that everyone else is working hard and doing their best, even if you don’t know what their work is. According to Carly Stec at Hubspot on being a great coworker, expressing appreciation and acknowledgment for your peers goes a long way to remind people they’re part of a supportive company.
Give Respect and Communication
Respecting other coworkers’ time, especially when responsibilities at a company vary, is one of the most important tips on hacking a coworker community. Using a scheduling service to send emails, for example, allows you to set appropriate times for working with your emails. By taking time to respond to an email, you give yourself room to craft higher quality responses that your coworkers would appreciate.
Showing a genuine interest in life outside of work can also help your coworkers feel comfortable around you, but do so when it’s appropriate. Asking your coworkers about their interests or hobbies will help remind your coworkers that you are a person, and not just another employee or manager. This goes a long way for entry-level employees too, as new team members need help sometimes to feel at ease. Make an effort to help them get situated during their first days on the job – and start making an impact on their careers down the line.
