Nerf Gun Wars at the Office Are A Good Thing! 5 Reasons To Let Your Team Play If you stopped by the Newsletter Pro office on a Friday afternoon in 2019, you might have stepped into the middle of a Nerf gun war. Coworkers battled across the common area and dove for cover behind their cubicles. Nerf darts flew like sparks. It was mayhem! These days, our team is largely remote, but we still play together. (Our company-wide Zoom Jeopardy games are legendary.) Why? Well, because play has proven benefits for both employees and businesses. Here are just five reasons you might want to consider utilizing a Nerf arsenal, starting an annual March Madness bracket, or purchasing a giant chess set for your office. 1. Play promotes creativity. Playing stimulates our imaginations, and that effect lingers when employees go back to work. One study found that bringing improv theater into the office, for example, led to “higher scores of workplace playfulness, individual creativity, and group creativity” among participants. With more creative firepower on your team, you’ll wow your clients and accelerate the growth of your business. 2. Play staves off stress and burnout. According to the Huffington Post, “research shows that play can decrease absenteeism, stress, and health care costs.” When workers play on the clock, they take fewer “mental health days” and are happier with their jobs — increasing retention and your bottom line. 3. Coworkers who play together stay together. Play forges bonds between coworkers, boosting employee retention. It also promotes teamwork after the games are over. “A playful environment is an environment where people collaborate,” PlayCore Senior Vice President Tom Norquist told GameTime. “It’s an environment where people get along. They remember what they learned as a child in play and they have empathy, so they understand other people’s ideas and they don’t shut them down.” 4. Playful people adapt quickly to change. Playing will put some of your employees out of their comfort zones — and that’s a good thing! Getting creative and trying new things increases adaptability, so the more your team plays, the more willing they’ll be to tackle the changes essential to growing your business. 5. Play attracts young, motivated employees. Gen Z and millennial workers are demanding more fun and flexibility in the workplace. To attract and keep younger talent, use play to break up the boring 9–5 work day that has become “so 1990.”
Create An Empathetic, Practical Marketing Campaign
5 Marketing Strategies Customers Won’t Ignore
Although 2023 is on its way, the impact of the pandemic hasn’t completely disappeared. For many pandemic-weary consumers, COVID-19 has changed their lives forever. From closing businesses to remote work, many consumers are now struggling from inflation or are simply unable to do the activities they love (due to falling out of healthier habits during lockdown). Since 2020, consumer perspectives and desires have changed greatly. How do you respond to this ever-changing market? There are a few strategies that’ll help you recognize your customers’ changing mindsets while offering practical solutions. No. 1: Check on your customers. The pandemic has exhausted and confused a lot of people. While your customers may be resilient, they may not be super patient, and you’ll need to assess their needs. What do they really want from your business right now? What kind of frustrations do they keep running into? This is a great time to build a message around practical solutions that will resonate with consumers. A report from Interactive Advertising Bureau found that four times as many consumers prefer efficiency in ads versus those who value campaigns that are “fun.” Emphasize tangible value in your services and products while also adapting to the swings in the public mood. No. 2: Update your analytics and insight methods. Google is delaying the phaseout of third-party cookies to 2023, but for marketers, the end of cookies looms ahead heavier than ever. Your old tools for tracking consumers and targeting ads will probably not work nearly as well, now that Google Chrome won’t support cookies. It’s time to talk to IT or a knowledge management software company about how you’ll track consumer behavior in the upcoming year.
So, what are you waiting for? Go grab that Nerf gun!
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