What if your life was way more fun? And not just in a deep, existential way. What if there was more cake, more lols and a confetti explosion every time you completed a goal?Sounds like a recipe for cheer to me.At the recent #project2015 conference, Greg Sheeran talked about his policy of celebrating everything. We totally agree.But why is it so important?Here are 6 reasons we reckon you should work celebration into your company culture:
Let’s be honest, throwing back the Doh-Bros and firing up the karaoke machine is a great way to knit a team together. But when time, money or a preference for not poisoning your body with large quantities of alcohol get in the way, you should try finding other creative (and frequent) ways to celebrate with your team. For example, running into strangers’ offices together, showering them with cookies and confetti and leaving a trail of helium balloons in your wake.
You’ll give everyone a chance to stop for a second, take a breath and re-boot just by pausing to celebrate a win – whether that’s for a team lunch or taking five mins for an epic jump-five. Our pals over at Blacksmith call this “Creating space in the pace”. We like that heaps.
We spend most of our adult lives doing or thinking about work. That should be an exciting prospect and having fun by celebrating achievements is a big part of creating that excitement. Progress is fun! Learning is fun! Feeling like you faced down your biggest challenge and then emerging triumphant (if a little battle scarred) is what keeps us going. Revel in it, enjoy it. You are a VIKING!
According to a recent study conducted by SHRM, celebrating wins, even in a small way, improves your team’s happiness. Happiness improves productivity and productivity improves the Exec team’s happiness. It’s a beautiful circle. And if that isn’t enough, in a 2011 Workforce Mood Tracker Survey, 69 percent of employees said that they work harder for a company that recognises their achievements. Sounds worthwhile to us.
So how do you embed celebration into your workplace culture?At Weirdly, we’ve embraced the celebration complex HARD. And by ‘hard’ I mean complete with liberal and luxurious use of confetti cannons. Celebration doesn’t always have to be big and noisy though.Here are some ways we’ve integrated the principle of celebration into the fabric of each day at the office – on a scale from tiny to messy:
Our fortnightly founders’ meetings start with a “snaps and slaps” section. We take ten minutes to share and remember the wins from the previous fortnight (snaps) and any learning opportunities we’ve had (slaps). This starts meetings on a positive, optimistic note, which is particularly great when we’ve got big, scary decisions or tricky issues to discuss.1. Upload custom gifmoji into Slack: Because honestly, saying “woo whoo! Congratulations!!” is just way more effective if you follow it up with a twerking bunny or the classic: Skype’s pool-party guy.2. Don’t let a ticket graduate silently: Like heaps of start-ups, our product team has their sprints planned up on the wall. That means we can all see as tickets get completed and features progress. We also track sales, business-growth and marketing activity through Google docs and gaant charts though – that way everyone knows when I’ve just got a big press-release sent out, or when Dale and Simon have nailed our first series of on-boarding video walk-throughs.3. Get retro with trophies and employees of the week:Don’t under-estimate how much people appreciate a physical reminder that they’re appreciated. Our guys finished an absolutely mammoth system re-build last week. It was the culmination of months of late, late nights and they were all wiped. Before the well-deserved weekend off, we all went out for a long lunch and presented them with home-made Weirdly trophies. Built from toy cars and stone “plinths” scavenged from a building site near the office, these trophies aren’t gonna win any beauty awards but they’re now sitting proudly next to each dev’s monitor to remind them they faced the mountain and came away victorious.4. Use integrations to make wins public: We use Intercom to track and communicate with our users and having this hooked up to a dedicated Slack channel means everyone sees when Xero signs up for a trial. Woops all-round! We’ll probably have to re-think this as we grow and volumes become well, spammy. But for the moment, it’s an awesome way for the team to stay connected to sales.5. Confetti bombs and carbs: Every Friday we have a team lunch. This gives us a chance to talk about stuff we’re having trouble with, or things we’re excited about. It’s an opportunity to say thanks and celebrate the goals met each week. If it’s a birthday week or we’ve hit a major milestone, there’s usually a confetti cannon involved.What are some of the ways you create a company culture of celebration within your team? We want to hear about it – comment below or tweet us @weirdlyhub
