Rituals for Work: 50 Ways to Create Engagement, Shared Purpose, and a Culture that Can Adapt to Change by Margaret Hagan, PhD, and Kursat Ozenc, PhD, explores how rituals—intentional processes with patterns or scripts—can be introduced to the workplace. Learn how to use rituals to help teams move past conflict, whether they lose their value if used too frequently, and how to introduce rituals into the workplace without causing people to roll their eyes or cringe.
Benefits of workplace rituals
Some benefits of workplace rituals include:
Celebrating success in the workplace
A workplace can be inspired to achieve and celebrate goals by implementing certain rituals, such as employee of the month, milestone celebrations, or performance-based rituals. When a department meets a quota on time, for instance, celebrating with a department-wide lunch or drinks can help workers connect over their shared success. After a team has worked hard to achieve a goal, performance-based workplace rituals can help assign credit and provide employees with a brief break.
Celebratory customs can be as elaborate as a party for a special occasion or as straightforward as a mass email. Celebratory rituals can also be cost efficient. When an employee completes a project and receives a high rating, for instance, a department might have an email sent out. Managers can publicly mark a department’s achievement of a milestone on a shared calendar with a note of congratulations if it occurs before the deadline as a whole.
Promoting employee learning
Work rituals are another tool managers can use to encourage employee learning at work. When a milestone is reached, for instance, managers could organize a meeting with all staff members to discuss how the project impacts the entire company and include a question-and-answer period. No matter what their position in the company or role in the project is, this can help every employee get better.
Many businesses want their culture to be one of ongoing learning and improvement. Attending a lunch with a guest speaker who responds to inquiries about pertinent competencies in your department can help you continuously improve and learn new things. Additionally, employees may benefit from company-sponsored training initiatives to broaden their experience and knowledge base.
The substitution of coaching activities for performance evaluations is another useful employee ritual. Instead of just evaluating an employee’s progress, this aids in the manager and employee learning through coaching.
Building employee relationships
Employee relationships can be cultivated through company rituals, particularly if they are original and personal. For instance, a manager might arrange a Friday night bowling event with free admission for the entire department to celebrate the completion of a significant project. Employees can relate to each other on a personal level and see each other as more than just coworkers when they attend events away from the office.
A simple monthly happy hour in the break room can promote peer relationships among staff members or get new hires to make friends with their coworkers. Other examples of out-of-office pursuits include playing escape games, going to the movies, or attending plays. Through these activities, workers can interact with one another outside of the office, participate in enjoyable activities, and get to know one another.
Encouraging leadership
Some department rituals promote self-management and leadership skills. For instance, a manager might request that staff members set quotas for themselves for a certain time frame. Then, they can jointly assess whether the employee’s quota was successful and determine how to make it better. Employees who participate in such rituals learn leadership skills and share responsibility for departmental workload and progress. Employees who set their own objectives may be more motivated to achieve them.
Helping focus on the individual
Rituals can aid staff members and managers in maintaining an individual focus and relating to private matters in the department. This can entail anything from praising an employee’s improved work to publicly announcing an employee’s accomplishments.
The acknowledgment of significant events in an employee’s life, such as getting engaged or having a child, may be another private ritual a manager has. Personal rites demonstrate to the worker how much their division or employer values them These rituals can also be relatively inexpensive. A manager can show an employee appreciation and motivation by sending them a cake for their birthday or flowers for an anniversary.
What are workplace rituals?
Workplace rituals are a variety of customs departments follow to foster stronger workplace ties. Rituals can include a variety of team-wide customs, like welcoming a new team member to the workplace to get to know them better or providing a briefing to all attendees before a meeting ends to help them learn. Rituals typically assist in forming a workplace’s culture to encourage cordial, open communication between employees.
Usually, rituals align with the companys goal or mission. For instance, if one of the company’s core principles is continuous improvement, a ritual they could have is holding department lunches occasionally that include business discussions so that all staff members can pick up new skills Rituals at work can impact both the company culture and how each employee views the business.
List of workplace rituals you can try for your company
If you’re considering establishing department rituals, take a look at a few of the following instances:
Food-related rituals
Rituals in the office, like lunches or break-room activities, can encourage conversation among the staff. Food-based rituals can also provide employees with a break at work and more chances to interact with coworkers and managers. Some food-related rituals to consider are:
Out-of-office rituals
Some rituals work better when performed away from work Out-of-office customs enable staff to converse in a variety of settings, on a variety of topics, and with a variety of objectives. These customs typically involve an activity that all department members can participate in and can take place on the weekends or in the evenings after work. Employees can express themselves through different activities and outside of the office through out-of-office rituals. Some out-of-office celebratory ritual examples can be:
Deadline-related rituals
Some work rituals help celebrate daily, monthly or quarterly deadlines. They can be as small as a notice or as large as a dinner in the evening. Rituals associated with deadlines help employees feel appreciated for the work they’ve done and motivate them to meet deadlines consistently going forward. Some examples of deadline-related rituals include:
Guest speaker rituals
Rituals that include guest speakers can assist staff members in continuously increasing their knowledge and skill in their fields of employment. Some examples of guest speaker rituals are:
Goodwill rituals
A manager can host a variety of customs to show their appreciation for their staff. Some may be modest acts, while others may be as significant as fully hosted events. Employees are likely to remember even the smallest acts of kindness, so planning them can go a long way toward making them feel valued. Examples of some goodwill gestures are:
Tips for using workplace rituals
The following advice should be taken into account when creating departmental workplace rituals:
Plan rituals with the employee in mind
Some of the best department rituals are created by managers with the employees in mind. Rituals that welcome new employees to the workplace, for instance, can make them feel valued and may make their first week more bearable.
For instance, employee coaching places more of an emphasis on improvement than meeting a deadline. Focusing your rituals on employee benefits as opposed to immediate departmental benefits may enable the department to accomplish more goals more quickly. Employees may be more productive in a department that values them if they feel valued and welcomed there.
Plan rituals sparingly
The notion that rituals are unique events rather than regular occurrences is a crucial component of ritual planning. For instance, if your department throws a party in the break room at the end of every workday, they might become too accustomed to it to be useful.
Employees may be more personally impacted by infrequent rituals than by frequent events. For instance, it might be more effective to host a department dinner after meeting a significant deadline rather than hosting the same dinner after a weekly deadline. Consider isolating certain rituals to specific happenings. Consider throwing a small party for an employee to celebrate their work anniversary, for instance, if you usually give gifts to employees on their wedding anniversaries.
Budget your ritual activities
Ritual activities vary in price, and can sometimes be expensive. However, good rituals can be cost-effective. Assume, for instance, that your small quality assurance department has just met a crucial deadline for the quarter, which enabled the company to finish adding a new building.
You decide to have a ritual to honor the occasion by inviting everyone to a department-sponsored dinner that night. As an alternative, you might think about inviting each department head to the building addition’s official grand opening, which is open to everyone. When planning your rituals, take into account your financial constraints and the potential effects each ritual may have on your employees.
Rituals | Employer Branding
FAQ
What are rituals in the workplace?
Rituals can serve a variety of purposes, such as fostering team unity or informing others about current events in business. Rituals typically serve a purpose, such as learning a new skill or getting to know a new employee. Ceremonies and rites usually take place on an organizational level.
What is an example of a social ritual in a workplace?
Make an effort to welcome new hires in a special way On the first day (or week) a new hire starts working, make sure they are given a buddy who will take them to lunch, decorate their workspace, or host a special morning huddle to welcome them.
Why are rituals important at work?
Because they work. They sharpen awareness and engagement in the things we do. Leaders in the business world can use rituals to emphasize things crucial to their organization and motivate people to pay attention to them.
