All work and no play = no fun!

Posted by: Guest Author

How Aptela builds morale and encourages teamwork through our “Culture Club”
As a small business ourselves, our team is comprised of a hard charging group of individuals who work day in and day out to grow Aptela and support our vast customer base. All work and no play leads to burnout and frustration...and that’s no fun! So the company relies upon our “Culture Club” to keep us balanced and ensure that we take breaks every now and then to kick back and enjoy each other.

 The Culture Club is made up of a group of employees from various departments who coordinate inexpensive, FUN team building activities and events for Aptela’s employees.  These activities help unite us as a team and bring enthusiasm to our workplace.  Each month a different department takes the reins and works with the Culture Club to develop and execute themed activities.  Employees are encouraged to come forward with ideas and take pride in doing something even more fun and creative than the prior month!

Our latest program was Health and Wellness, which we held throughout the month of May. Activities included:

• Daily Trivia: A question pertaining to health, wellness, or nutrition was emailed to all employees and the first one to respond with the correct answer got to select a reward from ‘Prize Central.’  (basically, lots of healthy, positively informative, natural, delicious, inexpensive goodies).
• Farmers Market: A weekly visit to the local farmer’s market where participants got to pick up fresh, locally grown goodies.
• Walks: Employees met once a week for a short 30 minute walk to kick start our metabolism and burn some calories. 
• Healthy Cook-Off:  Employees were encouraged to bring in healthy dishes to share with everyone for a Friday lunch.  The recipes were then compiled into a Healthy Cook Book prepared by the Culture Club and distributed to all employees. 
• Aptela Walk-a-Thon: Teams of employees were formed, team captains were named and Aptela-branded pedometers were handed out. A weeklong challenge began, where each team captain was responsible for motivating his/her team and submitting daily totals from each team member.  The team with the most “steps” at the end of the week won gift cards to a local smoothie shop.

While none of these activities required much funding, they all promoted the importance of health and wellness… and encouraged our employees to take a break to have a little fun. Monthly activities such as the ones the Aptela Culture Club organizes take a couple hours of time, a small budget and a couple of committed employees to get started. If you’re looking to build camaraderie within your small business, we encourage you to set up your own Culture Club at your company. A small commitment can and will yield very positive results!

Stay tuned as the Culture Club provides more on other exciting events that we plan in the coming months! And send us your suggestions…we’re always looking for new ideas to invigorate and motivate our staff.