Our Top Tips to help with the office Winter Blues
With summer holidays well and truly behind us, things can start to feel a little glum, particularly at work. Here’s our top tips on how to fight those winter blues in the office.
1. Plan some fun activities
Grey days and cold weather can make the winter months tough, and morale amongst your staff can fall to an all-time low. It’s important therefore to have something fun to look forward to.
Adding something exciting to your schedule can make a world of difference. It doesn’t have to be something overly costly, anything from a weekly office quiz or a cake tasting session, but just add a fun pick-me-up to your team’s schedule and it will be worth it.
2. Be Flexible
Sometimes the worst bit of a winter day is actually leaving the house and heading to the office in the dark, cold mornings. Consider allowing your employees to work from home. This will let your staff know you care about their well-being and allow them to miss the freezing commute to work.
3. Brighten up the Office
We all know how grey winter days can be in the UK, so have you considered if your Team’s work-space is lit well enough? Simple changes to the office can make a real difference with the winter blues, replace light bulbs for brighter natural lights, clean the windows, open blinds and shutters each morning and make sure the office is clean and tidy. Don’t under-estimate how much a cluttered and badly lit work-space can affect your team.
4. Shorten the working day
We all know that feeling of going to work on a morning in the dark and leaving after the sun has gone down in the evening. By shortening your working day, you can help increase your Team’s morale and show them that you care about their well-being. Your staff can always continue to work from home if they need to.
5. Stock up on good snacks
We can all be guilty of comfort eating, especially when the weather is pretty miserable outside, but the after affect of a carb-fueled snack can mean a huge slump which, mixed with the winter blues, is not what you want. Not to mention extra carbs adds extra pounds and then, extras stress!
Consider keeping some healthy snacks in the work fridge, focus on foods that will give back energy and missing vitamins. Vitamin D is a great vitamin to supplement during those cold winter months, so stock up on healthy yoghurt snacks that your team can reach for when they need that mid-afternoon pick-me-up.
6. Celebrate the Winter Months
Don’t forget Winter can be a fun season too, with Bonfire Night, Christmas, New Year’s celebrations and Valentine’s Day, you can make these occasions an event. Whether it’s a fancy-dress day in the office or a trip to a local Christmas Market, get your team involved in celebrating the season.