To boost our spirits and give our busy brains a break before we moved into our demanding summer months, our team, with their significant others and few friends, got together this month for a private Paint Social. The result was a night of friendly competition, light banter, team building and some wine and cheese: good old fashioned fun and laughter!

At Plan A and StaffStat we are a very close team, who work collectively to ensure that our work is completed on time and to a high standard, and that our internal projects are also given some tender love and care. We are very goal oriented and we have been very successful hitting our goals month after month and year after year and I believe this works for us because we all genuinely like each other.
How many places have you worked where you can honestly say that you have gotten along with everyone? And it’s not just that – we are working on some big (and costly) projects and people inevitably get stressed, so working with people you have fun with and respect really can make all the difference. We all understand each other and work to make sure nobody is left feeling like they are on their own. In fact, when we’ve hired people who have a separate agenda and won’t pull together with the rest of the team, they simply don’t last.
Workplace play can come in many forms. Here are some of the things we do in our office to keep our minds playful and our team cohesive:
1. Celebrate successes – to keep the energy and momentum alive we like to applaud our team’s success. This could be as simple as a social media blast about something we’ve accomplished or opening up a bottle of wine on a Friday afternoon. Either way, celebrating team wins keeps our team focused on the next win!

2. Recognizing birthdays – we recognize birthdays. Even though work goes on as usual during a staff birthday, we do take that opportunity to let that staff member have the limelight that day and for that one day, it’s ‘their’ day.

3. Staff get togethers – we all like to have fun. Recently our team got together to watch Mel’s band play at a local restaurant, we had our team paint night as mentioned above and tomorrow most of our team is spending the day on the golf course. It’s nice to let loose and spend some time getting to know each other out of work. It leads to genuine friendships outside of the workplace. We stress when we work together, why not try relaxing together too? Because we’re friends we have each other’s backs at work, which means when something is pressing everybody is willing to jump in with all hands on deck to help out!

4. Personal days – each employee is allotted 4 personal days per year. This gives us the freedom of flexibility and allows us to bring our best selves to work knowing we can accomplish important personal stuff during work hours if necessary. This keeps people from feeling guilty if they want to take a personal day and encourages a culture of support for our personal lives.

Getting out of the mind space where you interact with your colleagues and turning it into something fun can help your team work more creatively and draw on each other’s strengths when it comes to working as a team. It’s the little things that make your team feel valued so I suggest getting to know your colleagues outside of their professional roles. It will give you some great insight to each team members hidden talents!