A while ago, my new boss sent email and asked all employee to contribute some ideas for healthy workplace environment and I list some suggestions. It is essential to have positive and support work environment than poisonous work environment.
1, Promote Health Articles and Newsletters.
Write down health articles for employee and remind their importance of their health. It shows that the workplace care for employee’s health.
2, Make Health Ambassador in Office Some workmates may serve as positive examples for others and encourage them to live a healthy lifestyle. They could be health Ambassador in Hey. 3, Allow Flexible Work Hours Some senior educational leaders live in 3 hours round trip and they could work at home sometimes. Kindergarten teacher can sometimes plan at home. For stay-at-home female staff with baby, whether they can have some talents for offer the center and support them to be employed for certain hours? 4, Promote Healthy Workplace Environment We had different culture background and integrity level. What is meaning of respect way to talk with each other? It can be so different from staffs. What is standard and respect way for better communication? What kind of behaviors will be at border of work bully or potential cause work bully? Work bully had long term effect on employee mental health. Education article about anti workplace bully and equal opportunities. Eg, Real life example, Kate is down syndrome disability and she worked in my workplace as volunteer nearly 5 years without pay. I never hear or saw that she got any reward for all volunteer work. I understand that she is disability and not finish her course. 5, Organize In-house Library I love reading and I found that someone added some fantastic mindful reading books in small room which located near staff room. It is amazing. It can build more books and magazine related with wellness for in-house library. 6, Reward loyal employees A lot of staffs worked in Hey more than 5, 7, 10, 15 years and they never be reward much except one small photo in newsletter. Personally, I think that it will be quite meaningful to reward loyal employee for long time commitment. 7, Yoga class I knew one talent staff even qualified Yoga teacher and it can be good opportunities to offer program for employee who wanted to join in. 8, Offer mental health support. My workplace had employee mental health support for four times, when I experienced workplace bully experience few months before, I used all session and cannot use more anymore due to employee program expired? Whether it could any program which can support employee in future to look for constant help. 9, Reward excellent effort and contribution for outstanding staff. Gave a real-life example, L had idea during Covid 19 in 2019 to appreciate all staffs. She used her own time to send thousands email to local business. She collected hundreds donation from hundreds business in her own spare time. She drives so long to collect so many donations for staffs. She used her own time to put hundred goods to bag and gave to the staffs. For the staffs, it may be small bag, but for her, it was huge job and effort. I appreciated unselfish effort from her so much. She was interviewed by channel seven. However, not much recognition and appreciation. 10, Practice gratitude and create positive work environment.
I always show my gratitude towards people’s kindness, and I did a lot of handmade presents for some people. For example, I stayed in my workplace more than 12 years. I went through so many bosses. I even got anything from my boss to say thank you for my hard work even I worked very hard. This year is first year, my new boss Caroline bought one box of chocolate and wrote down one card for me. She said that she appreciates my contribution and valued me as staff. She only worked for few months and how she remembered and bought.
As return, I drew one handmade card with bird and bought one small tea for her. It is matter of people’s kindness and words.