I met with a good friend the other day and he was very excited about purchasing a company where he knows the employee culture stinks. And he was excited for two reasons - one, because he knows the financial potential of the company is huge once he can get the people excited about their workplace and two, he's looking forward to making a bunch of miserable people happier.
And he said, "I know just how to do it. I know just how to turn the employee culture around." He said, "I've done it before with a large sales team [the hardest group of employees in his mind's eye] and it was simple and easy because all I did was one thing."
As you can imagine I was listening with baited breath.
He paused.
"There was lots of infighting, bickering and competing. Never mind the gossip. Oh and they barely sold a thing - some of them even stayed home! I've never seen such a mess. So this is what I did, everytime someone made a sale, I sent a voicemail to the whole sales team congratulating the sales person and encouraging the rest of the team to call the sales person and congratulate them. And what was crazy is that they all called each other - even the ones who didn't like one another, because no one wanted to be "the jerk" that didn't call! And soon the salespeople who weren't making sales wanted to start receiving calls from their peers too. The mood of the entire team completely flipped."
So how could peer support (instead of typical peer pressure) work in your company to boost morale, and perhaps consequently productivity?