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How to Use What You Have

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The baby beaver scurried back and forth between the shower stall and the doorframe. Between his teeth was a mop.

Then came a bucket and some other household items, creating a makeshift dam-like structure in the doorway. He was intent on his task, spending quite a long time constructing and tweaking the arrangement of the items.

His human “mom” was exasperated but understanding. You see, “Beave” is a rescued baby beaver. The rehabber is encouraging him to perform his instinctive tasks, even if it blockades her bathroom.

I encountered Beave and his mom on TikTok. The other people in the comments suggested that she give him building blocks, to see whether his construction would be more solid.

No, Beave wasn’t interested. Instead, he continued bringing household items from all around the home, building a beautifully messy “dam” made of buckets, toys, shoes, and anything else within baby beaver-reach.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

There’s not even any water.

What can you do today, with the resources at your command?

If you’d like to obsess about Beave with me, you can find him @beaverbabyfurrylove on TikTok, or on their channel on YouTube: Raising the Wild.

Raising the Wild, Beaver Rehab

How to Cultivate a Happy Work Environment

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By Kayla Matthews

Businesses experience ups and downs throughout the years as a result of many different factors. Profits might decrease because of a sinking economy or clients may prefer to take their business elsewhere because newer businesses opened up nearby.

Sometimes a business fails to exceed quarterly or yearly expectations because of the work environment. When employees aren’t happy to clock in every day or don’t enjoy the 40 or more hours they spend there each week, the business will suffer from decreased productivity.

Prevent this from happening by reading about how to cultivate a happy work environment. A few adjustments to the current work culture could make all the difference between your business succeeding or failing this year.

Balance Work and Home Life

Most people don’t choose a career because they want to work long hours and rarely spend time outside of the office. Even employees who do what they love will still want to leave work at work when they clock out every night. When there’s no clear boundary between the two, it’s difficult for employees to manage their stress and appreciate the opportunities their job offers.

Make it clear to employees that management intends to help them balance their work and home life. Strategies such as cutting down on unnecessary meetings or enforcing quiet hours where meeting rooms open up for phone calls helps everyone focus and get more work done.

At the end of the day, employees will feel happier knowing they accomplished everything they needed to and get to mentally unplug at home. They’ll appreciate their job and management more, leading to more productivity and a positive work environment.

Create Workplace Perks

At a certain point, working hard isn’t as rewarding as it once was. Employees who give their all every day will experience burnout and produce lower quality work at slower speeds. Their low energy may also spread to other employees who could feel the same way.

Encourage your employees and thank them for their hard work by creating workplace perks that go beyond a small yearly raise. Raises are nice, but they rarely make a significant change in an employee’s financial life.

Instead, check out perk ideas that everyone will love. A few easy ones to start with include:

  1. Increased Paid Time Off (PTO)
  2. Free snacks or drinks
  3. Memberships at a local gym
  4. Monthly work-from-home opportunities

It may be useful to send an office survey listing potential perks and asking people to vote for their favorites. The accurate survey results will guide management to the most motivating perks without a trial and error process.

Reinforce Work With Positivity

There may be no better feeling than a rewarding show of thanks after hard work. It’s more personal than a nod in the hallway after weeks or months of dedication. Management should reinforce hard work with positivity, which will result in more customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction is the same thing as customer happiness. When customers feel that they’ve been treated right, their happiness is what brings them back in the future. Without happy customers, no business can succeed for very long. The happier customers become, the stronger the business is.

An effective way to ensure customer happiness is to create a happy work environment. Employees who love where they work and what they do will spread their happiness to the customers they interact with. That’s why many businesses know customer happiness is necessary to achieve projected success.

After implementing tips like showing gratitude to employees instead of saying it, their happiness will be felt by customers who come back for more of that positivity. Host a workplace lunch, order a special award or meal for the hardworking employees or create special perks just for the best performers to see this result in your workspace.

Provide Professional Growth Opportunities

No one enjoys working a dead-end job. People always look for new opportunities to grow and dream about what their future holds. Even if your business is small or just starting out, you can still provide professional growth opportunities through things like online training or simply rotating job responsibilities. As your employees grow, they’ll become more invested in what they do and where they work, resulting in a happier work environment.

Communicate With Employees

Every workplace is different, so communicate with your employees frequently to learn what they’re dissatisfied with or where the office could improve. They may be more interested in more training opportunities or need encouragement after they’ve completed a project. Work with them to improve the work environment and achieve happier employees and customers at the same time.

 

About the Author: Kayla Matthews writes about communication and workplace productivity on her blog, Productivity Theory. Her work has also appeared on Talent Culture, MakeUseOf, The Muse and Fast Company.

 

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

4 Ways To Prevent Employee Turnover In Your Startup

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By Kayla Matthews

Keeping good talent is tough for any business, but when you’re an emerging startup, it can be a make-or-break matter. Losing the person who drives innovation or puts the whole team at ease can cripple a promising operation in its youth, and as a leader it’s your job to stop that.

So what can be done?

Sometimes you have to think outside the box when you can’t throw money at people. It won’t surprise you to hear that the world of startups relies heavily on flexibility and the attraction of new ideas to retain talented people who value their stake in the company. Here’s how you can realize these ideas at your own startup.

1. Be Choosy About Management

When you’re a startup, every member of your team is critical, but for you to do the job of leading the company you can’t always spend your time overseeing each individual. Stressors are high in this environment, and while many startups enjoy a high-energy culture that lends itself to breakthroughs and rapid growth, that takes a toll on employees. This is why you need excellent management.

Managers who know how to motivate and encourage their direct reports are essential for your company to succeed. Think of them as an extension of your own role and empower them as your direct reports. A strong management team will go to any length to shape procedures and policies in a way that lends itself to productivity by listening to their employees, understanding what works and acting when change is needed.

2. Encourage Personal Growth

Speaking of listening to employees, a startup is often attractive because of the opportunity for growth that a startup presents. Workers have to push themselves and wear multiple hats. In doing so, they pick up valuable resume builders. If you’re not careful, they’ll take those new skills and walk right out the door.

But many people don’t. Startups that succeed in keeping good people understand why their people are learning these new skills, how they plan to use them in their career and what the next challenge is after an employee has advanced.

If your management team can stay one step ahead and continue to provide learning opportunities other places can’t, employees will remain engaged. Run out of new skills in one area? Throw a rockstar employee into something a little foreign to them and watch them thrive on new challenges.

3. Be Social

The company that hangs together, stays together. And in a startup environment you might just be hanging together working twelve hours into the day because the team is small and things need to get done. We’re not saying that should be an all-the-time thing, but the flexibility of a startup environment should allow you to make the workplace fun and less rigid.

That means you need to spend some time putting work down, too. Get the team out on the town, or even have a gathering at someone’s home if it’s small enough. The opportunity to create strong bonds that a startup presents is unique to this size and type of business. Don’t waste that opportunity. Build strong relationships with your team.

4. Incentivize with Vesting

Vested options are perhaps the most drastic, but also very effective means of ensuring that people stick around. Many startups offer stock options as part of their compensation package. If the options mature too quickly, people are encouraged to take their money and run. So create a plan wherein their shares increase across multiple years and employees can only keep them if they stay with the company.

Companies in the San Francisco area where tech startups abound have been said to use a four-year strategy that vests after the fourth year and then restarts at a higher quantity of stock.

However you choose to do it, the only way you can go wrong is by not realizing the importance of your employees in a startup. Hiring the wrong people can completely sink your operation, so you’ve got to choose wisely. The best selected employees can’t help you if they all leave, so give them every reason to stay with cool workplace perks, a friendly culture that embraces productivity and some exciting alternative compensation!

 

About the Author: Kayla Matthews writes about communication and workplace productivity on her blog, Productivity Theory. Her work has also appeared on Talent Culture, MakeUseOf, The Muse and Fast Company.

Featured Photo by Shridhar Gupta on Unsplash

5 Ideas for Gamification in the Workplace

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By Kayla Matthews

Gamification is a tool used by businesses to achieve new goals. However, with the emphasis on fresh new technology, many small companies are hesitant to adopt the strategy.

Implementing gamification is easier than you think and can lead to significant results. That’s why many large brands, including Microsoft, Target and Nike, have already undertaken the challenge.

What Is Gamification?

Gamification is a tool that implements game design and content elements into non-game applications to motivate participation, engagement and loyalty. It doesn’t have to be digital, relegated to your website, apps or social media. It can also be analog and relate to day-to-day operations.

The elements of gamification are referred to as game mechanics, covering competition, challenges, collaboration, levels, badges, instant feedback and more. These elements can be used in various combinations to achieve your desired goal.

While some businesses use gamification as a way to connect with customers, many have already realized the benefits of bringing the tool into the workplace.

How to Gamify Your Workplace

For gamification to be successful, it has to be well-planned, executed and maintained. If done right, it can increase engagement and motivation in employees.

When considering how to gamify the workplace, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What goal or objective do you wish to achieve?
  • What is your target employee behavior?
  • How do you think gamification will help?
  • What motivates your employees?
  • What tech will employees be comfortable with?

The gamification process isn’t an instant one. It’s a method you should test and tweak each time you implement a new idea.

  1. Train New Hires

Training new hires can be tedious, especially when there’s a lot of information to cover in a short amount of time. At the end of orientation, it’s not uncommon for trainees to feel they learned very little. By implementing gamification into the new hire training process, you can create a system that promotes learning through gaming mechanics.

One example of this is using badges as a user progresses. Samsung developed a similar program dubbed Samsung Nation, which rewards users with badges as they create content, watch videos, review products and engage with the community. Other companies are using a similar gamification process where new hires can gain achievements as they train.

  1. Boost Employee Performance

Outside of new hire training, gamification is used as a tool to enhance employee job performance, with 90 percent of employees rated more productive when using gamification. It can add a fresh and healthy competitive air to your office space, spurring employees to have fun as they work harder.

One example of using gamification to boost performance is Salesforce, which introduced its Big Game Hunter program to entice sales representatives to use the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Each team member started at the first level as a chicken hunter. As they became more aware of the CRM features, they could work their way up in status.

  1. Implement Team Goals

To make gamification work, you need to understand what your employees want. Once you have a goal in mind, create a path with actionable tasks to achieve it. By creating a clear objective, using a focus both you and your employees can agree on, you can use gamification to align employee goals with your own.

One example of a goal that can benefit both employees and management is a new R&R space, which can easily be added with an office pod. While you may think napping during work hours can’t possibly be beneficial, research shows there’s a strong correlation between rest and recovery and workplace productivity.

  1. Use Clear Communication

From new hires to top-tier managers, employees need clear communication and feedback to perform well. This can be a major issue employers face, especially those with a large workforce. Without open and clear communication, workers often feel disconnected and unpassionate about the work they do.

One way to combat this is to learn from Target, which wanted to connect with front-of-the-line staff — cashiers. Target decided to create a game they could play when checking out items for customers, providing real-time feedback in the form of red and green blinking lights. Before this method, cashiers had no way of knowing if their methods were effective.

  1. Improve Workplace Efficiency

Employees may be knowledgeable and hardworking, but that doesn’t mean they’re being as efficient as possible. One method businesses have used to evoke leaner practices is to introduce gamification in the form of challenges, achievements, rewards and recognition.

One company utilizing gamification is Omnicare, which created a series of achievements sales representatives could work toward, starting with a challenge at the beginning of each shift. As workers progress through the day’s problems, they can earn rewards. This led to less wait time for customers, an increase in customer satisfaction and a reduction in employee turnover.

Utilizing Gamification in the Workplace

When implementing gamification in your workplace, the key to success is understanding precisely what you wish to achieve. Listen to your employees to better understand their wants and motivations. Try to come up with a rewards or achievement system that works with their unique desires and limitations.

Once you’ve used this tool, be sure to assess if it’s effective and what areas can use improvement. You should always be searching for new ways to optimize and improve results, even when you’ve already achieved your desired goal.

 

About the Author: Kayla Matthews writes about communication and workplace productivity on her blog, Productivity Theory. Her work has also appeared on Talent Culture, MakeUseOf, The Muse and Fast Company.

Featured image: Eric Tompkins on Unsplash

Sunshine, Silence and Contemplation

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Oh that moment.

You know the one I mean.

That moment when the sun is shining through the windows of your home (or office) in the earliest hours of the morning.

That moment when you are drinking your first hot cup of coffee or tea or perhaps even a smoothie.

And there’s only you, sunshine and silence.

Plus contemplation. Lots and lots of contemplation.

Yes — that’s the moment.

That’s the exact moment I’m talking about.

Now, truth be told — we’ve pretty much all experienced a moment such as this at some point in our lives.

Yet, for more than a few of us, the reality is that we can’t quite recall the last time we were in the middle of a moment of sunshine, silence and contemplation.

Life is like that.

Moments come and moments go.

And silence mixed with sunshine can be fleeting. Especially on cloudy, hectic days.

Yet — the reality is this — the sun shows up every single day.

Even on the cloudiest and stormiest of days, it’s still there.

Especially when we can’t see it.

The truth is that on those days and in those moments, we simply have to wait a little longer for it to show up with it’s full beauty and brilliance.

And silence?

Yes silence is always there too; even when we can’t quite hear it.

No matter how hard silence is to find, you have to believe that it can always be heard too.

Especially on the loudest of days.

So tomorrow morning, grab that hot cup of coffee or tea or your favourite smoothie and sit down by a window.

And wait.

Wait without your phone. Without notifications. And without people.

Just wait with yourself.

Wait, watch and listen.

If you are lucky, the universe might just decide to cooperate. And you too will experience the moment I’m talking about.

Yes — that moment.

No matter who you are, what road you are on or where life is taking you (or where YOU are taking your life) — there’s virtually nothing better that starting your day with the collision of sunshine, silence and contemplation. It will focus and ground you more than you realize.

Jane Boyd is a Partner in GeniusShared. She is also the CEO of 45 Conversations Media & Education Ltd, a Canadian education and training company based just outside of Vancouver Canada. She works with educators, business, community and government in the areas of early learning, work-life, community development and employee engagement.

10 Gen Zers Who Are Innovating the World

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By Kayla Matthews

 

Generation Z sometimes gets a bad rap from older people, but just as with every generation, there are those who are bad seeds and those who strive to make the world a better place.

Gen Z makes up the largest population in the United States, even though it is only 25 percent of the population. There are many reasons why they’re transforming the workplace, but one reason is the large number of Gen Zers who are innovating the world. Here are 10 of the more interesting and innovative Gen Zers.

Jason Li

Jason Li is the founder of iReTron, an electronics company. While in high school he sold comic books, and then he took out a $2,000 loan from his dad and started his company in his bedroom. He is one of those college students also running a business, so when he graduates he will already have hit the ground running with a highly successful company.

Noa Mintz

Noa Mintz, the founder of Nannies by Noa, was only 12 years old when she started the baby-sitting business. While she did eventually hire a CEO to oversee day-to-day operations so she could finish her own education, her vision for a service that was much needed in the New York City area allowed her company to grow into a powerhouse.

Anna Zhang

Anna Zhang is a photographer and social media influencer. She is the editor-in-chief and founder of Pulse Spikes, a quarterly online and print magazine. She also is publishing a collection of essays written by other young influencers.

Akhilesh Khakhar

Akhilesh Khakhar wanted to help other students ace their college entrance exams, so the recent high school grad came up with an app called PrepUp to help them do just that. He’s teamed up with a company to create a complete SAT and ACT prep service that will utilize the app, an online platform and online tutors to prepare students for testing.

Alyssa Kapasi

Alyssa Kapasi noticed that some of her fellow students were going hungry, so she and some of her friends decided to do something about it. Through fundraising and finding sponsors, they were able to expand awareness and motivate school districts to provide free lunch and to donate to the nonprofit Food for Thought.

Matthew Whitaker

Matthew Whitaker is a young jazz musician who has already played in festivals and secured sponsorship deals from musical instrument manufacturers. Whitaker plays the piano, organ and drums, and he also composes and arranges music. Whitaker is blind, but states that he is blessed by God and wants to be a blessing to others.

Sasha Matthews

Sasha Matthews is one of the youngest entrepreneurs to make this list, and her talent is a bit unique. She is a cartoonist who uses her drawings to give a voice to free speech efforts. Her series is called “Everyday Superheroes.” She used the sale of her comics as a fundraiser for the ACLU.

Marley Dias

Marley Dias is a young author who was inspired when she realized there weren’t many stories about girls like her. She said all the books in school were about “white boys and their dogs,” so she launched a campaign called #1000BlackGirlBooks, where she collected and donated books that featured black girls as the main character. She also has her own book out now.

Ryan Felner

Ryan Felner started a business by combining aerial photography with his skills operating drones. He began taking photos in Westport, Connecticut, for those selling real estate, but ran into some issues with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for operating without a commercial license. Not one to be easily dissuaded, he worked with the FAA and took the training needed to get a commercial license.

Maddie Greenspan

It probably isn’t surprising that Maddie Greenspan was destined to become an inventor, since her father is in manufacturing and the family runs a business. Still, when she was frustrated trying to make something fun — slime — because she couldn’t find the ingredients, she decided to just go ahead and make her own.

 

How Can You Change the World?

These young innovators prove that to make an impact, you simply need a vision and the passion to see it through. These are just a few of the amazing under 20-somethings doing big things. It will be interesting to see what they accomplish in their 20s and 30s.

 

About the Author: Kayla Matthews writes about communication and workplace productivity on her blog, Productivity Theory. Her work has also appeared on Talent Culture, MakeUseOf, The Muse and Fast Company.