Office Culture and Environment
We spend a good chunk of our life at work. Surrounded by people who start off as strangers and overtime you become mates or create a level of friendship and then they become your family.
While putting our May newsletter together I came across 4 different articles about making the work place a better place. One talks about the office culture, the other, the office environment and how these two things has an impact on staff engagement, productivity, retention rates and how it is the boss’s responsibility.
My take on this is, work can be as difficult or as pleasant as you make it. We all have our good days and days where everything is not going our way. I had one of those days last week. Annoying!
How you react to these scenarios depends on you and your ability to process what just happened. You can choose to Go nanas and give everyone a shit day or go for some air, blow off steam, in my case, buy shoes and pot plants, calm down then rationally deal with it. Whatever your thing is, it’s up to you how it pans out.
A couple of years ago I learnt about The Betari Box. I’ve used this model for conflict management but it’s a good tool to understand the impact of my attitude and behaviour towards self and others.
Basically, The Betari box shows how My Attitude affects My Behaviour which in turn affects Your Attitude and Your Behaviour. Then Your Behaviour affects My Attitude and the cycle continues.
Example: When I’m difficult, I do things to annoy myself and others. That will piss people off and attract a reaction I won’t like, and the cycle continues. However, when I’m happy and share that positivity, it will attract a positive reaction. Simple sense eh?
Anyway, like I said, we spend a good chunk of our lives with our boss, staff/ colleagues and at work. It’s a shared responsibility to make the best of it so we can all pay our bills, feed our families, grow as a person and help work achieve its goals.
Out of all of that, this is our receptionist Lily and Moananui Yorke, our office dog. Moana or Momo goes to day care in the morning and comes to work around 4pm every day.
Apart from sniffing out food in the kitchen, or snacks in the cupboard she says hi to our staff and visitors. She’s a nosy parker and is good at ignoring people too.
Momo will be your best bud if you give her tummy rubs and food. She sits in client meetings, on the floor or on a chair if you let her. Her attention span isn’t very long. She falls asleep or buggers off if the meeting takes too long. She’s the same when kids come for a visit. She will baby sit for a little bit, if she hasn’t fallen asleep already, she will bugger off soon.
You will find Moana sleeping on the couch in Dan’s office, in the admin area, or her own bed. Pets bring such positive energy in the work place. Good for the Betari box model.