How To Create a Positive Work Environment, No Matter Where You’re Working

Whether you’re working from home, from the office, from your parents’ living room, or from a chateau in France, you might be having trouble remembering how to infuse positivity into your workday. From organizing your workspace to relying on Hive for specific tasks, there are many simple tweaks you can make in your daily routine that promote positivity.

Read on for some tips and tricks to create a positive work environment – for you and for your entire team.

Blockers to positivity

Your current work environment could feel a little negative for any number of reasons. For instance, your schedule might feel like it’s creating a bit of negativity in your workday, as you might have an overwhelming workload that you have a tough time managing. You also might feel like your work could be a bit more challenging or mentally stimulating. So whether you’re working from home or working from the office, the tech you’re using can make both feel like a drag.

You could also experience some negativity as a result of your environment. Your at-home setup could leave a lot to be desired, and even if you’re going back into the office, your workflow might be just as disorganized as your messy desk.

And lastly, you could also feel some negativity from the people that surround you. Whether it’s a lack of recognition for your successes and milestones or simply issues with recurrent miscommunications, a positive work environment can be hard to maintain if you’re constantly feeling disheartened – even if you’re working from a perk-filled office or a beachside vacation home.

Luckily, it’s not impossible to learn how to create a positive work environment no matter where you are, who you’re working with, or what you’re doing.

Identifying a positive work environment

Before outlining how to create a positive work environment, you’ve got to define what it means to you. Generally, a positive work environment is a place where ideas are freely exchanged to achieve a common value-based goal in an optimistic setting that brings you joy each day. And while every day can’t be a walk in the park, having a positive work environment means appreciating the ups and downs while feeling excited and supported along the way – regardless of your physical location.

Work and workflow

If the work you’re doing feels like it’s fostering some negativity, there’s a good chance that you’re not feeling drained, overwhelmed, or pessimistic about the work you’re doing; it’s how you’re doing it that’s the problem.

Tech is make-or-break when it comes to creating a positive work environment. Without useful tech, you can begin to conflate the content of your work with the processes of it, and your job might start to feel slow, time-consuming, or unnecessarily complicated. A recent Salesforce study reports that employees who are dissatisfied with the tech they use at work don’t feel as productive, and they’re more than twice as likely to report being burned out by their work. And in the worst-case scenario, these feelings may ultimately tarnish how you view your accomplishments.

Another report from PWC notes that employees value tech that builds skills, facilitates teamwork, and helps their individual work become more manageable – and there’s no better option than Hive when looking to check all those boxes. From streamlined calendar views to task-focused time-tracking, you’ll never feel held back by confusing project management apps that require time budgeted just to navigate them. Even if you’re not working in the office and you need virtual meeting spaces, Hive’s got you covered; you can meet through Zoom or Meets, take notes, and manage action items all in one place.

Physical space and digital space

Organizing a workspace can help you craft a positive work environment, whether it’s physical or digital. According to Princeton University’s Neuroscience Institute, the human brain likes organization, and when surrounded by disorganization, our cognitive resources can be diverted to focus on the mess. When participants cleaned their desks and their work environment was less cluttered, their processing speed improved, their productivity increased, and they were able to focus on their work again.

While keeping your physical space in order is essential, organizing your digital space can help your entire team understand how to create a positive work environment. A study from Professional Organizers in Canada showed that a disorganized workplace (one that can cause 70% of people to feel stressed and experience feelings of failure.

That’s where Hive comes in – one app for all of your needs. In addition to integration, which easily incorporates apps you use every day into Hive’s interface, every action item is tracked (and prioritized, if you want), and it’s easy to collaborate on meeting notes as the meeting is occurring.

Positivity and inclusivity

Even if you get along well with your coworkers or manager, you can still feel emotionally exhausted when you’re not feeling appreciated. But once again, it’s probably not the relationships that are the issue, especially if you’re working remotely. PWC’s study says that 56 percent of respondents feel that their human interactions are limited by technology. Over half of workers think that digitization should focus on automation, like common HR tasks or running transactions through various programs.

Tech is a problem when it comes to communication issues, but it’s also a great solution when looking to fix them. If you’re working from anywhere, you’ve got to have the right tools to facilitate a positive work environment. While video and audio upgrades are an obvious necessity, good communication is about prioritizing the human experience and automating time-consuming tasks that make communication more difficult.

Hive can help you make auto-scheduled meetings or automate tasks so that action cards can move to different projects after certain triggers, an action’s assignee can be changed, or an action’s status can change, and all parties are notified of the change. You can also simplify existing communications, like assigning the next steps after a meeting, leaving more bandwidth to talk about the important things, like meaningful feedback.