Positive criticism can help to transform the way your employees work for the better. Here’s some information about what positive psychology is and how you can apply it to your workplace.
What is positive psychology in the workplace?
Positive psychology is a technique that explores the scientific values of positive emotions. Feeling positive is linked with a good wellbeing, improved health, and a generally happier life.
Alternatively, without positivity we feel anger, frustration, and sadness in our lives. With these positive affirmations, they can be applied to your work life and make productivity increase.
Positive psychology is used to increase satisfaction in the workplace. As we spend half of our time awake at work, it’s important that this time feels as enjoyable and productive as possible – otherwise it can become quite a slog and will lead to employee dissatisfaction.
Employers and managers can help put positive psychology into practice by focusing on the good that their employees do and helping to improve their engagement with the workforce.
How can this be done?
There are a few simple steps you can take to using positive criticism to motivate your employees. It’s essential that you focus on the good, rather than the bad.
Sally Earnshaw, MD Gallagher Culture Change says it’s important to “Catch people when they do good stuff and not catching them when they do wrong stuff.”
Praise your employees when they’ve completed a task well, or where they’ve done something, incorrect try saying things like “You’ve made a good start on this, try doing X instead” etc.
Be transparent with your employees and make them feel involved at every process. Ensure that they have their opinions heard and they each suggestion they make is considered. This will help to make your employees feel valued and appreciated by the company.
Make sure you and your employees are on the same page with the feedback and they know what they can do going forward. Ensure that your employees can visualise their targets and that they are broken down into more achievable chunks so that your staff feel a sense of pride once they have met a target. This will help keep employees motivated and aim to see that they’re all moving towards the same goalpost.
Be sure to have regular meetings with your employees so they can discuss any problems that they have, and you can plan together to work towards a solution.
