Did you know that sport has a strong relationship to work and productivity?
A major study, commissioned by professional services recruitment and talent agency, Hudson, has evaluated the impact of sporting success and failure on the UK workplace. The research has been conducted by The Social Issues Research Centre, an independent, non-profit organisation founded to conduct research on social and lifestyle issues, monitor and assess global sociocultural trends and provide new insights on human behavior and social relations.
The results reveal that sport can have positive effect on boosting morale and improving mood, motivation and productivity in the working environment.
Sport is influential and has important place in the working life. It plays huge part in creating bonds between colleagues and managers on daily basis and enables all employees to establish connections with each other. Most important, sport can boost performance and bring significant financial benefits to the companies whose culture embraces sport.
In conclusion the research suggests some interesting ideas that employers can use to enhance the benefits of sport in the workplace and boost the positive impact on morale and productivity.
- Encourage staff to watch and attend sport events together. The energy generated by the collective support and interaction will make employees feel more valued and will provide them with an interesting and different topic to talk about other than product features and work related stuff.
- Encourage staff to play sport together: hiking teams, running clubs, football, tennis leagues at lunchtime or after work. Again this will develop shared interests and refreshing feelings, which will definitely boost productivity.
- Focus on sport during team building events. Healthy competition can arouse team spirit and will have positive effect on relationship between management and more junior staff.
- Sponsor employees who specialise in some sport. Support their efforts. Ask them to run a coaching session for their colleagues or make presentation on what they’ve learnt from being part of a sports team, how to maximise performance and how to remain motivated.
Source:http://www.sirc.org
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Note from the author: This article was inspired by a recent question I had to answer to my fellow teammate. It got me into thinking an voila! What do you think on the subject? What keeps you motivated at work – sport, maybe something else? I’ll be glad to know your opinion in the comments below. 🙂