How to overcome the summer slump
Now that it is August, you may notice this month that some of your teammates seem a little disengaged or distracted from their work routine. Productivity can wane in the late summer months when a majority of employees elect to take their annual leave.
A four day week may seem a harmless excuse for taking it handy this week, but it’s incredibly easy to fall out of your normal work rhythm, especially during the summer months. The warm weather, coupled with the desire to be abroad sipping on ice drinks, can lead to an understandable productivity slump.
Companies tend to be short-staffed as it is during the summer as many employees take the majority of their annual leave to go on extended holidays, so dealing with a slump should be made your top priority.
1. Give your employees something to look forward to
If it’s been a particularly busy week for your staff, stress and burnout can easily set in and lead to a drop in productivity and performance.
Promoting wellbeing in your office is an important step to creating a healthy, productive work ethos. According to the Nutrition & Health Foundation, 7 in 10 employees tend to stick with employers who are interested in their staff’s wellbeing. They also found that 1 in 2 employees would even consider leaving employers who don’t care about office wellbeing.
Why not try hosting weekly activities such as lunchtime yoga, meditation or even a potluck lunch? This way, you can break up the day and create a fun, vibrant atmosphere which will be reflected in your employees’ mood.
2. Shake it up!
Monotony in the workplace can be the most prominent draining force behind low staff morale, and if your staff aren’t happy then good luck trying to get anything done on time.
Something as simple as switching the seating arrangements every now and then can do wonders for an employee’s state of mind and it can inject a little bit of enthusiasm into the general atmosphere. If it’s a particularly nice day outside, encourage some of your team to take their work outdoors if possible. If necessary, why not look into obtaining overflow or coworking office space to help re-focus your team and to help grow your project from a new perspective.
Remember, a fresh work environment leads to fresh ideas.
3. Give In To Summer Fridays
With summer in full swing, last minute plans are being thrown at you left, right and centre and it can be hard finding the time to balance work and play. This can be seen in your team every Friday as they begin to shift into weekend mode early on in the day and virtually nothing is being done past lunchtime.
According to an article by Lisa Evans in Entrepreneur Magazine, it’s been shown that the majority of people who worked “summer hours” or had flexi-time on Fridays had said that it had contributed to a healthy balance between work and life.
While most comapnies are unable to let employees take the full Friday off, why not encourage your team to work a couple of extra hours Monday to Thursday in exchange for half-day Friday, giving them an early start to their weekend.