Bring Your Staff Together This Holiday Season! 5 Ways to Boost Employee Morale

Bringing together your accounting and finance team during the holidays is a great way to elevate morale. Setting up activities for your staff to participate in helps them interact and get to know each other better. This can increase engagement, collaboration, and productivity both now and in the future.

Choose among these ideas to unite your accounting and finance team and elevate morale this holiday season.

1. Play Holiday Music in the Office

Play your team members’ favorite holiday songs throughout the workday. Music has been shown to enhance productivity and spread positive feelings. Diversify the playlists, artists, and songs to include Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and other religious holidays. Additionally, include lyric-free seasonal songs for a more neutral holiday environment.

2. Encourage Desk Decorations

Let your employees express their holiday cheer by decorating their workspaces. This has been shown to increase motivation, engagement, and productivity. It also elevates energy levels and makes staff happier. Suggest neutral decorations for the rest of the office. This may include dressing up the refrigerator in the office kitchen as a snowman or wrapping an office door like a present. You may want to hang stockings with small gifts for your employees as well.

3. Promote a Wellness Activity

Set up an activity in the office to increase relaxation and reduce stress. This is especially important if your team is working extended hours during the holiday season. For instance, hire an instructor to come in for an hour of meditation or a yoga session. Your staff should return to work refreshed, invigorated, and feeling appreciated. Or, bring in a lunchtime fitness instructor to provide walking tips while your team members walk outside and breathe in the fresh air. They can enjoy a bag lunch before returning to work.

4. Provide Monetary Gifts

Surprise your staff with additional vacation days, a year-end bonus, or another monetary gift. Your team will appreciate the extra time off to unwind with family and friends. They also would enjoy treating themselves to a holiday gift from the company.

5. Offer Additional Flexibility

Because employees tend to be busier than ever during the holidays, allow more flexibility in their work schedule. Your staff may need additional time for shopping, decorating, baking, attending school events, and visiting with family and friends. Loosening up their schedules encourages your employees to participate in the activities that mean the most to them. Letting them fit their work around their personal lives as much as possible shows you care about their happiness and well-being.

Happy Holidays from Casey Accounting & Finance Resources!

Bringing your accounting and finance team together during the holiday season is a great way to build morale. The excitement of celebrations with family and friends and the anticipation of beginning a new year make this the perfect time to build memories.

When you are in need of professionals to add to your team, reach out to us. We look forward to helping you attain your business goals in 2022.

6 Benefits to Boost Morale During the Summer Months

With the sun shining, employees want to be outside. Given the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing requirements in 2020, it is more important than ever to get outdoors. As a manager, you need to find ways to boost morale by improving the balance between fulfilling work responsibilities and participating in summer activities.

Choose among these six ways to improve employee morale for your in-office or remote team.

Summer Hours

Implement summer hours so your team spends less time in the office. Have your team work a half-day on Friday or work longer Monday through Thursday and take off Fridays. Having an abbreviated workweek increases employee satisfaction, productivity, and morale.

Picture Sharing

Provide opportunities for your remote team to virtually share pictures of their summer activities. Engaging with others through photos and stories provides insight into their lives. Lively conversations about fun memories make everyone feel connected. This promotes team bonding, collaboration, and company culture.

Outdoor Activities

If local social distancing regulations allow, plan an outdoor activity for your team. Take them mini-golfing, camping, or to an outdoor movie. Or, set up a family-friendly barbeque at a local park or your home. Encourage everyone to sign up to bring food or a beverage to share. Include friendly competitions and prizes. Employees appreciate time to socialize with coworkers in the sunshine and fresh air.

The Perfect Summer Vacation

Ask your remote team to call a coworker and describe the perfect summer vacation. Emphasize that time and money are unlimited. When your team members finish, have them get together on a video conference to explain their coworker’s dream vacation as accurately as possible. This promotes listening and looking for common interests.

Volunteer Day

Choose a community event that your team wants to participate in. Find out which causes they care about most, then organize an activity around them. This may include picking up trash along a beach or park, walking dogs at an animal shelter, or setting up a food or clothing drive. You can arrange more than one volunteer day to accommodate as many interests as possible. Keep in mind there are plenty of ways to give back while doing so remotely.

Virtual Movie Night

Host an online movie night for your remote team. Remind everyone to have popcorn, snacks, and their beverage of choice ready. Stream the film through a video conference platform. Keep an instant messaging chat box open for team members to comment while watching. This provides an opportunity to relax, open up, and joke about things later on.

Plan Ahead for Summer Vacations

Working during the Summer instead of being outside can be challenging. Providing fun summer activities for in-office and remote teams to participate in promotes engagement, increases happiness, and boosts morale. Staff perform at higher levels and feel less stressed when they are able to have more fun with team members.

When you need to fill accounting and finance absences due to summer vacations, turn to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. As a trusted staffing partner, we reduce your time spent on recruiting, evaluating, screening, and interviewing employees. Learn more today.

Why Remote Options Can Boost Your Employee Morale

Remote work options may be one key to boosting your employee morale. Having more control over one’s work schedule and location increases work satisfaction, engagement and productivity. Engaged, productive employees are happy employees, which leads to greater morale.

Increased Job Satisfaction

Because employees avoid the commute, they experience lower stress levels and less work exhaustion. This results in a higher positive attitude, lower absenteeism and greater employee retention. Also, as baby boomers head into retirement, they want remote work options to complement their desired preretirement lifestyle. Generation X may be done raising their kids and want to be in the workforce but still want to spend time with their families. Millennials may be looking for life experiences that broaden their horizons and expand their networks. Plus, Generation Z may desire remote work options to refine their career growth.

Stronger Manager and Employee Relationships

Because management is even more critical when working remotely, managers need to be proactive leaders who are intentional in their style. They need to create standards and expectations for remote collaboration and model successful behaviors for remote work to be successful. With increased methods of communication and virtual connections, managers and employees can virtually connect face-to-face, through email or instant messaging, or over the phone when needed, resulting in greater connections.

Better Health

Since stress and burnout are lower, employees feel physically and emotionally healthy. Also, work flexibility stimulates the brain, leading to happier, more creative employees. It also builds relationships among different generations of workers, which increases feelings of happiness and well-being, improves communication and reduces conflicts. Additionally, remote work options allow for more sleep, so employees feel refreshed and productive the next day. Plus, employees who are ill may be able to complete their work without infecting co-workers.

Greater Work-Life Balance

Working from home allows employees to take care of personal responsibilities while still completing their tasks. They can tend to family needs, run errands, exercise and engage in other interests while fulfilling their professional responsibilities. Employees can also attend meetings through video conferencing and ask questions through instant messaging tools, ensuring they fulfill their duties while working remotely.

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