We should all be aware that there are so many remarkable benefits of being friendly towards others throughout our whole lives.
From a school age, we are taught to be friendly towards others.
When I was at school, my headmistresses favourite quote was 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all'; a way to be friendly to others that has stuck with me throughout my life.
But what about in the workplace?
We spend most of our lives at work, yet there is often a sense of distance and hostility between colleagues.
People who lead teams should consider running regular employee engagement surveys in order to measure the level of happiness within a team. One such tool that facilitates this process is PulseMate.
Some forms of competition between employees is friendly, healthy and actually promotes friendship.
However, other forms of over competitiveness between employees or feelings of hostility will cause huge problems of dissatisfaction and demotivation throughout your workforce.
Here's a few fabulous ideas of ways to create friendliness within your workplace team:
- Treat everyone with respect. You must look at every single member of your team as a vital member and show that you value every single persons opinions, ideas and concerns.
- Become an active listener. You should encourage your employees to actively share their thoughts and ideas and you must listen to these ideas, actively showing that you are taking them onboard.
- Connect with your employees on a personal level and promote the formation of friendly relationships outside of the workplace.
- Provide a tension release for your employees. This could be by playing team sports or by introducing relaxation afternoons where employees can receive massages or meditation treatment. This tension release will release the tension that your employees are feeling and will stop hostility and feelings of frustration being transferred between colleagues.
- Use team building activities to get everyone working better together, trusting each other and understanding each other. Here's some ideas of team building inexpensive and fun team building activities that your team will love.
- Celebrate success and victory as the celebration of hard work will promote a sense of cohesiveness and friendliness within your team.
Here are the five most intriguing benefits of promoting friendliness within your workplace:
1. Being Friendly Increases Knowledge Sharing
Being friendly, and creating a friendly environment within your team, will promote a sense of knowledge sharing within the team.
Being friendly allows for face-to-face collaboration which allows employees to flourish from each other and share their ideas and experiences.
This means that employees will feel comfortable with sharing their experiences, ideas and skills with others because they feel appreciated and like they can trust their employees to value their knowledge and not judge them.
This will benefit your team massively as it will create a sense of trust and will be the fuse for creativity and enthusiasm.
Here are the direct benefits of knowledge sharing:
- Creates a sense of trust within your team which will boost morale, productivity and effectiveness.
- Is the fuse for creativity and enthusiasm as it allows for lots of valuable ideas to be shared and used in projects.
- Allows problem solving to happen faster and more effectively as sharing knowledge between employees allows for effective solutions to become reused every time something goes wrong.
- Improves communication and collaboration, again, increasing morale, productivity and effectiveness.
- Allows for better and quicker decision making as employees can understand, analyse and support each other better and bring together all their skills and knowledge to make accurate decisions.
- Cuts down cost and time of training and teaching as employees can actively share their skills and knowledge with others, which will benefit others and allow them to use these skills to their advantage.
2. Being Friendly Increases Team Spirit & Morale
If everyone is friendly towards each other then there will be a sense of cohesiveness and trust, which will, in return, increase team spirit and morale.
This will have a huge positive effect on your team as there are many benefits to having high morale and elated team spirits:
- High morale will allow for better production as when employees feel positive and enjoy their working environment, they will feel more satisfied and far more motivated. These highly motivated employees will work harder and will therefore improve sales and give higher levels of production.
- A high morale will reduce absenteeism as low morale will cause employees to become disengaged and unmotivated to come into work. These employees who miss work are likely to fall behind with their workload and easily be overwhelmed, and are therefore more likely to leave the company, which costs lots a money.
- A high morale promotes collaboration and cohesiveness as a positive and friendly working environment, and increased morale, is likely to promote a willingness to work together towards goals.
- A high morale will increase each employees esteem and satisfaction as they will feel valued and happy at work.
3. Being Friendly Will Improve Mental Health Issues Within Your Company
A friendly environment will reduce the stress some people may feel about coming into work and will help employees to feel happier in the workplace.
Mental health awareness is so important and should not be ignored, especially in the workplace and being friendly at work allows everyone to support each other fully and create a supportive network for each employee.
The benefits of looking after each and every one of your employees mental health are endless.
Of course, when it comes to the business, employees who are mentally looked after will be more motivated, show lower absenteeism rates, higher retention rates and will be more satisfied at work; all things that will directly increase the company's productivity.
But, mentally looked after employees will also feel better, healthier and happier in themselves, which is just nice; isn't it!
4. Reduces Stress By Creating A Positive Working Environment
When there isn't any hostility or uncomfortableness within your team, there won't be as much stress as employees won't have to worry about their interactions with others and/or whether other employees are judging their ideas or skills.
A friendly working environment also creates a support network and a sense of trust throughout all employees, meaning that all the employees can rely on each other and share their concerns, worries and workload if needed.
This supportive environment also fosters growth of many employees and motivates them to be involved in the organisation.
This will improve communication, allowing for operations to run smoothly and further reducing stress.
It will also allow employees to focus more on their jobs and provide better quality work, increases the productivity of your company.
5. It'll make you feel better about yourself
Good deeds and friendliness will add meaning to your life. So, unless you're an actual psychopath, seeing other people happy will warm your heart.
P.s: Often good deeds and favours are returned, so theres a selfish benefit to being friendly - help someone out, and they'll most likely help you out in return.
6. Being friendly will make everyone more satisfied, which will enhance all the things listed above (Bonus!)
Overall, being friendly will increase your satisfaction, and your colleague satisfaction.
You will feel better for being nice, your colleagues will feel better because you've been nice, and when they are nice in return, you too will inevitably feel better.
Happier and satisfied employees are more motivated, more successful, more effective, show better mental health awareness and will feel less stressed.
This benefits the whole company as it increases retention rates and produces higher quality work, increasing your returns on investment.
Summary
Finally, when people are friendly towards each other the morale increases and the working place becomes far more enjoyable.
Therefore, friendliness will make your employees far more effective and far more productive.
We hope you enjoyed learning about the benefits of maintaining a friendly workplace.
Is there another benefit you've noticed? Share it in the comments below!
