We all turn up to work in the morning to complete our required jobs, for 8 hours a day, to get a salary at the end of each month. Whilst your team may be fulfilling their roles to a satisfactory level, have you taken a second to think about how team morale, productivity and retention could increase by adding more social occasions to the diary?

As you reach the festive season each year the topic of conversation is always about the plans for the Christmas party, and this continues into January with all the fun memories being shared and reflected upon. The reason behind this is purely because it is something different and exciting that they get to attend which lifts the team’s morale.

But why should this only take place once a year? There is much more that you can do to ignite a similar level of excitement throughout your workforce.

At Hive, we have always tried to make a conscious effort to get more social occasions in the dairy. We feel that this is a good way to enable the team to bond, switch off from work for a little while and encourage valuable conversations. For this reason, we have recently implemented a ‘culture calendar’.

What is a culture calendar?
Typically, a culture calendar is what marketers use to monitor media moments and partnership opportunities as a way to improve their marketing and advertising.

Hive’s culture calendar has been created to monitor opportunities in the same way, but to the benefit of the team instead. This helps us to ensure that we are covering the bases that we want to with regards to boosting the team culture.

What does a work culture calendar look like?
Hive’s culture calendar consists of a variety of things ranging from office based activities, team development days through to social food and drinks. However, yours can look as you want it to look based on your team and what you want to get out of it.

Over the last month or so our calendar has consisted of the following activities;

• Accountancy Retreat – team development day held at St Michaels Resort
• National Smile Month – a daily quiz where the team have to guess the celebrity smile
• National Numeracy Day- a numeracy countdown activity
• Hive 7th Birthday – team away day to Knightor Winery

How do you implement a culture calendar?
To implement a culture calendar, there aren’t really any dos and don’ts to follow. I recommend simply starting out with a calendar and thinking about what key events are occurring in each month. With these events in place, you can then decide what you want that occasion to look like, based on what you want to get out of it.

For example, on 3rd July it is Thank You Day. You may wish to organise a little thank you present for your team, or celebrate with team drinks one evening after work.

As I say, you can make your calendar what you wish, but with one in place I am certain that you will soon see your team’s communication lines improve, staff retention rates increase and lots of genuine smiles on faces as you walk around your practice.

If you need any advice on how to implement one, or for any general advice on team culture, get in touch.