Boost productivity by creating a social committee at your company. Workplace social committees foster healthy interactions, improved teamwork, and better relationships with the surrounding community. Discover how to form a social committee at your workplace and the type of activities you can promote below.
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What Are Workplace Social Committees?
A social committee is a group of employees that meets periodically to brainstorm new ways of improving employee satisfaction by breaking up the workweek with fun events. Social committee members often focus on promoting employee health and building strong relationships between coworkers.
How to Form a Workplace Social Committee
Once management has greenlit a new social committee at work, you should invite your most creative, outgoing, and organized employees to serve as the initial committee members. Speak with human resources or your team leaders to identify the best candidates.
After putting together a social committee at your company, schedule the first meeting.
Ask each committee member to come prepared with mission and vision statements, as well as a few ideas regarding potential bylaws, exciting activities, and achievable goals.
Encourage committee members to engage other employees for additional suggestions.
At the first meeting, share your mission and vision statements. Then, either pick the best ones or merge a few to establish a clear path forward for your workplace social committee. You should also address budgetary concerns and create a schedule for future meetings, fundraisers, and events.
Types of Workplace Social Committee Activities
Show your employees that you care by inviting them to participate in fun, rewarding activities. You’ll find no shortage of exciting things to do as a team during work breaks. The best workplace social committees assess their coworkers and plan events that suit their abilities.
Consider scheduling activities for Wednesdays to split up the workweek or Fridays if you want to treat committee events as a reward for your employees’ hard work. Some of the most popular in-office social committee activities include:
- Game Day — Board games, trivia, and charades
- Themed Casual Fridays — Pajamas, gym clothes, 80s, 90s, etc.
- Food Events — Pizza party, potluck, or salad bar
- Exercise — Yoga, Zumba, Pilates, or aerobics
- Mental Health Day — Meditation, aromatherapy, music, etc.
Sometimes, you need to take your team out of the office so everyone can share an adventure. Some of the best activities that take place outside of the office include:
- Dinner at a restaurant
- Smash rooms and escape rooms
- Go-karts, miniature golfing, and bumper boats
- Wellness retreats and spa days
- Holiday gatherings
To understand your team a little better, ask them for in-office and outdoor event suggestions. Make sure you approach the introverts on your team to gather ideas that will appeal to as many employees as possible.
Benefits of Social Committees in the Workplace
Workplace social committees offer companies several benefits that increase productivity and improve branding. Some of the advantages of forming a social committee at work may seem obvious. Others remain more indirect. Discover some of the main benefits of social committees in the workplace below.
Improved Morale
The fun will continue until morale improves! Most business owners understand the value of high employee morale. However, some of the positive side effects of high morale often go unnoticed. As a result, managers may deemphasize team morale until it starts to suffer significantly. In general, team leaders find it easier to maintain average morale than recover from poor morale.
Some of the benefits of high employee morale include:
- Improved engagement and buy-in
- Greater productivity and efficiency
- Fewer physical and mental health issues
- Better employee retention
You can improve company morale by:
- Emphasizing communication
- Increasing transparency
- Encouraging work-life balance
- Demonstrating concern for all employees
- Promoting employees from within the company
- Offering competitive benefits packages with supplemental health insurance
Better Teamwork
The fun will continue until morale improves! Most business owners understand the value of high employee morale. However, some of the positive side effects of high morale often go unnoticed. As a result, managers may deemphasize team morale until it starts to suffer significantly. In general, team leaders find it easier to maintain average morale than recover from poor morale.
Some of the benefits of high employee morale include:
- Improved engagement and buy-in
- Greater productivity and efficiency
- Fewer physical and mental health issues
- Better employee retention
You can improve company morale by:
- Emphasizing communication
- Increasing transparency
- Encouraging work-life balance
- Demonstrating concern for all employees
- Promoting employees from within the company
- Offering competitive benefits packages with supplemental health insurance
Positive Messaging
Let your employees know how much you care about them by setting aside some time for fun and frivolity. When a manager decides to sacrifice a little company time for the well-being of employees, it sends a powerful message throughout the company. Employees that feel appreciated prove more loyal and productive.
To effectively communicate a positive message, a manager must:
- Change communication styles based on the message recipient
- Listen to complaints and repeat the information back to employees
- Emphasize transparency regarding company goals, expectations, and policy changes
- Demonstrate empathy by providing insight into shared challenges
- Display open body language to promote healthy communication
Free Marketing
For most business owners, one of the sweetest benefits of forming a workplace social committee involves all the free marketing that comes along with it.
When you set aside time for fun with colleagues, word gets out. Once potential employees hear about your company’s positive culture, you will see a marked increase in the quality and quantity of resumes that your HR department receives.
Field trips to other businesses offer significant rewards, like improved brand awareness, organic networking, in-kind trades, and more. Consider scheduling outings to other businesses that you might want to partner with in the future. Forming an office social committee could lead to your next big contract.
Community Development
Embed your company as a vital part of the local community by organizing social events outside of the workplace. When you unleash all your personnel on the streets of nearby neighbourhoods, people take notice of your large group. By interacting with individuals and businesses within your immediate vicinity, you can magnify your impact on the community.
Organize joint charity events, patronize local businesses, and meet potential customers. When you increase employee engagement with the surrounding community, you open your company to new opportunities that may not otherwise present themselves. Plus, you support the success and development of everyone around you by organizing an outdoor social committee event.
Healthier Staff
One of the best benefits of forming a social committee at your workplace involves the overall health of your team. By encouraging your employees to stay more active, engage with coworkers, and focus on work-life balance, you can help them avoid bouts of depression and the development of heart disease.
Healthy staff members are productive staff members. A social committee at work can reduce employee fatigue and minimize the number of sick days employees use. Plus, healthy employees remain more likely to engage with each other and management personnel, improving communication and leading to a better work environment for everyone.
Our country enjoys considerable fame for its health care system. However, no system is perfect. Sometimes, government health insurance doesn’t cover the medical attention that employees need. You can take your push for a healthier staff a little further by offering provincial health plans to your employees.
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4 Ways to Cultivate a Positive and Productive Work Environment
In addition to adding some fun to your employees days, you can’t miss our article on more ways to cultivate a positive and productive work environment.
Keep Your Team Smiling with Supplemental Health Insurance
Reinforce the positive messaging of workplace social committees by offering your employees extended health care and dental insurance brokered by Group Enroll! Positive company culture goes a long way towards supporting the health of your employees. However, you can make an even bigger impact by filling gaps in health coverage.
Request a quote from Group Enroll today or contact us via email at hello@groupenroll.ca. Our team of insurance professionals will find the best available insurance plans for your company based on several competitive quotes from major insurance companies. You can also reach us by mail at 10 Great Gulf Drive, Unit 5, Vaughan, ON, L4K 5W1.