25 Random (but Fun) Facts about the Workplace

Cure your Monday-itis (or any day itis) with these wonderfully random fun facts about the workplace!  Which one is your favourite?

Feeling productive.

Tuesday is the most productive day of the week. ¹

Pump some tunes.

Listening to the right music while working helps people get things done faster. ¹

Catch some Zzzzz’s.

Adults who regularly get 7.5 to 9 hours of sleep per night are up to 20% more productive.¹

Quench that thirst.

Drinking sufficient amount of water/liquid can increase your daily productivity by 14%.¹

You’ve got mail.

Workers spend more than 25% of their day in reading and answering emails. If they check emails at set points in the day, it will increase their productivity.¹

Enjoy a good belly laugh.

Laughter boosts your immune system by enhancing your antibodies (which help fight infections) and increasing your immune cell count. This helps reduce your chances of illness and missing out on work.²

Engage your team.

Organizations with high employee engagement outperform those with low employee engagement by 202%. ⁴

Keep your team together.

37% of engaged employees are looking for jobs or are open to new opportunities, as are 56% of not engaged employees and 73% of actively disengaged employees. ⁵

Say thank you.

70% of employees say that motivation and morale would improve massively with managers saying thank you more. ⁶

Be socially responsible.

85% of employees said they were likely to stay longer with an employer that showed a high level of social responsibility. ⁷

Joking around does not distract people from work.

Worried that office humour will lead to distraction? Studies show increased humour in the workplace does not detract from people’s productivity or their ability to complete tasks that require concentration. ²

Increase profitability.

Highly engaged business teams result in 21% greater profitability. ¹⁴

Maybe don’t watch the clock…

If you work 40 hours a week from age 20-65 you will work just over 90,000 hours in your lifetime.⁸

Dress to impress.

In Germany, employers can require women to wear bras to work. (Yes. This is true!) ⁸

Feeling unwell?

Monday is the most common sick day. Except in Australia, apparently, where the most common sick day is Tuesday. ⁸

BRB we are moving to the Netherlands.

In the mid 2000s, the Netherlands became the first industrialized country to drop its work week hours to below 30 hours ⁹

Roll on over here.

The average office chair with wheels travels about 12.5km per year. ⁹

Get comfortable.

61% of employees are more productive when the dress code is relaxed. ¹⁰

Shake it up.

68% of Australian businesses have embraced activity-based working within their workplaces. ¹⁰

Welcome to the new millennium.

It’s estimated that millennials will make up 35% of the workforce by 2020. ¹⁰

Stress less.

Laughter increases blood flow by 22 percent and stress decreases blood flow by 35 percent.¹¹

Seeing green.

A glimpse of green makes people more creative ¹²

Following the leader.

80% of your culture comes from your leadership.  Good culture and leadership is so important, partly because it provides guidance for how people can behave in a consistent, positive, and productive fashion, particularly when no one’s watching. We do this with our kids all the time. They get home from school hungry for a snack, run into the kitchen and raid the cupboard. Do they pick the granola bar or the chocolate bar? Ideally, they pick the thing that we as parents would like them to pick. At work, the system is amazingly similar. ³

Good things come in small packages.

The ideal team size is between 4 and 9. A team of this size can move quickly, make decisions rapidly, and get stuff done with remarkable productivity. Bigger teams produce more communication hurdles. Smaller teams enjoy more fluid and spontaneous communication. ¹³

Feel the love.

Team Bonding releases oxytocin: Oxytocin is a brain chemical that is being released during a sexual orgasm. All in all, people tend to work more, be happier etc. when they are in a team that they love. Team building is a great idea to bond people. ¹³

So there you have it; 25 quirky facts to bring a little playfulness to your workplace environment!

References