Celebrate World Kindness Day in the Workplace

It is known that kindness can increase positive energy, happiness and improve relationships while reducing stress and anxiety. This is true both in your personal life and your work life. Today is World Kindness Day. This is the perfect time to think a little more about ways to be kind at work. There are simple ways to express kindness to your coworkers everyday. 

• Gratitude. Expressing thanks is one of the most basic ways to be kind at work. Saying "thank you" when someone completes a task you asked for, when someone hands you a file, when someone picks up something you dropped and for many other actions performed throughout the day is one of the most basic ways to be kind. In shopVOX, you can set up a Thank You email template for customers after they receive their order.  

• Compliment. When your designer completes a design for a client, compliment his creativity. When your sales person closes a big sale, compliment their closing skills. When your custom sales rep patiently deals with a challenging customer, compliment their patience.

• Use names. When speaking to co-workers and clients, using their names creates a personal touch which creates mutual respect and a friendlier workplace. 

• Clean up after yourself. After you eat your lunch, throw away your trash. After washing your hands in the sink, dry the splashes you may have created. Empty the shredder is your filled it up. Fill the printer with paper if you realize it's empty. 

• Greet. Greet those who walk into the room. A pleasant "Good morning" with a smile can shift a persons demeanor by making them feel noticed and appreciated. 

• Lend a hand. If you see someone needing a hand, lend it. Open the door when a coworker is carrying boxes, show a new tip you learned for shopVOX, and offer a glass of water, coffee or snack to a person that has not had a break in a while. 

• Stop rumors. Rumors can wreck havoc and cause tension in an office. Kindness is refusing to partake in rumors and to stopping them when you hear them. 

• Welcome new employees. Be welcoming and warm to new employees instead of seeing them as a threat. Invite them out to lunch and get to know them.

• Collaborate better. When all team members are on the same page, projects run more efficiently and stress is better managed. Keep each other in the loop. Using shopVOX makes this easy, but it's important to update your status so others are in the know. 

Make a personal challenge in your workplace to be a bit more kind and witness the positive changes that occur.