Employees that Play Together, Work More Together

            I came across this article posted by a colleague on LinkedIn and thought hmmm how does this relate to Coastal and how it can affect your office as well. I feel that our camaraderie in the office helps our productivity level perform at a higher level. Now we are much smaller company than iGate but we have a lot of similar comparisons in our workplaces. We chit chat on Monday mornings about what we did over the weekend, gossip about whats going on in the celebrity world, brag about their NFL football team beating one another team, discuss our favorite show Revenge (that is if everyone watched it, we don't like to spoil the surprise), celebrate birthdays with cake or breakfast (because we ALL love Suzy's cheese grits). It is impressive to hear this happens in a large 27,000 employee company as iGate. Below is the article from Business Review, its worth the short read.

It’s actually true – a workforce that has fun together builds trust, engagement – and increased productivity.
Everyone needs a circle of friends – and when employees feel they have compatible peers at the workplace, the workplace is a more comfortable, pleasant, peaceful place to be.  At iGATE, we’ve confirmed this through research, and developed several structured employee engagement programs in response.  These include peer groups where our employees interact, around favorite sports, favorite teams, favorite TV shows – whatever their interest; and structured employee engagement programs.
For example, we celebrate ‘Thank God it’s Monday’ to kick off the week in a high energy way. Every Monday, lunch is accompanied by our own in-house, all-employee band, which has grown from seven to over 30 employee members. This has been going on over five years, and just keeps getting stronger.
It’s a fun way to get people involved and engaged. We also build camaraderie by eliminating a lot of those irritating aspects of work – we strive to reduce meetings and meaningless paperwork; and many of our peer groups help employees learn new skills and pursue new interests. Our aim is to create a high happiness index and add meaning to our employees’ lives – all 27,000 of them.
At iGATE, we take a comprehensive, integrated approach to people management. We’ve worked to understand what truly motivates the workforce, through numerous surveys and studies, and we’ve developed a best practices approach from leaders around the globe.  This approach has inspired outstanding employee engagement, and helped us consistently deliver quality service and solutions to our clients in Canada and worldwide. We’ve received the ‘Practice of Excellence’ award from the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), for its Competency based Career Planning and Management System; and we are one of only two companies globally who have been assessed at People CMM® Maturity Level 5 – a framework from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), USA that comprises state-of-the-art, best practices for Human Capital Management.


Now I would like to give a congratulatory high five for everyone at Coastal. It does make a difference when we are all getting along and working as a team. Every employee here is an important part of day to day functionality and making Coastal a success. Let us know what you do in your office to keep the team playing together and happy.