BusinessDesk is proud to publish The Reset series, made in association with our trusted commercial partners and designed to supercharge your business in 2021. In this article, Café Direct talks about the benefits of fostering a sociable workplace.


We in New Zealand are aware of how incredibly lucky we are to be able to go back to the workplace after what 2020 threw at us. 

Covid has changed the way the world works, and for other countries, working from home is a new and drawn-out reality. But here in Aotearoa, if we stay vigilant we’ll continue to reap the reward of being able to work in the same location as our colleagues.

Who would have thought this simple normalcy would be so enviable in 2021?

While there are personal and mental benefits to working from home, the same is true of going into the workplace. There’s no substitute for the kind of positive atmosphere created by colleagues socialising, where ideas and relationships can percolate, develop, and motivate. Our businesses are our people. 

Common ground

The workplace is unique. It’s where we spend so much of our time with people we didn’t choose to be put together with. It shouldn’t be forgotten that many find it difficult to cement themselves within a team, even with their best intentions. 

Tom Lysaght, national key account manager at Café Direct, says how a business sets up its workspace speaks volumes.  

“If you just have an empty kitchen or lunchroom, there’s no real reason for people to use it. Add a coffee machine and it gives that room or space a purpose and a reason for people to come together.

“It’s in these moments that colleagues are given a great excuse to step away from their work and forge better social working relationships.”

Making sure work is a welcoming and comfortable place to go every day should be the number-one priority, with the results benefiting the mental health of staff as well as a business’s bottom line. After the turbulence of 2020, this should be front of mind for Kiwi organisations.

That applies whether you ply your trade on a construction site, in a skyscraper, or at a school – the team of five million being able to take the fight to 2021 together in the same place unites us all and is practically unique in today’s world. 

Workplace relationships are directly related to job satisfaction. Pre-covid research found Kiwi workers who have good workplace relationships with their managers and colleagues are far more likely to have a high rate of job satisfaction – 91 percent – than those who don’t have those good relationships – 55 percent. 

The study found only 2.7 percent of employees with strong workplace relationships were unhappy in their jobs and workers with the least autonomy were the most unhappy at work. Those trends hold true and are even more relevant in our covid-affected world. 

For those running a business today, taking full advantage of New Zealand’s fortunate ability to gather at work is not an opportunity to be missed. 

“We’re seeing that businesses have a growing focus on engagement, using coffee as a big part of driving that. It can be a really effective tool at showing they care about their staff,” said Lysaght. 

From the ritual of the first coffee when everyone arrives in the morning, to the mid-afternoon slump and 5pm final stretch, the eight-hour workday with your colleagues should be viewed as a gift, but one that is ripe for change.

Three ways to energise your employees

Some of the best things a business can do to encourage a socially charged and productive workplace is through small change. Little gestures can go a long way to settling and uniting a team into producing their best work. 

  • Regular breaks – not only allowing them, but actively reminding staff to take them. Even if it’s five minutes in the sun to clear their head whenever it’s needed, or a scheduled afternoon break, allowing your employees time to pause without them feeling guilty is essential.
  • Free lunch once a week – the cost to business owners of providing this can be trivial, and while it will impress some workers more than others, you shouldn’t underestimate the positive impression actions like this can make on a team collectively. 
  • Change the meeting space – a simple thing like changing the format of a meeting is enough to spark creativity. Meeting in the same room at the same time every day is not a good foundation for inspiration. 

By ensuring every workplace interaction between staff is positive, business owners can do their part to help foster a positive work environment. Meetings, calls, and presentations are the backbone of business for many, but it is a fatal error if workplaces are not also a place to socially catch up, have fun, and occasionally blow off some steam. 

“It’s where a lot of the culture is created, chatting around the coffee machine, meeting up in the canteen and having those really good-quality conversations,” says Emma Smith, marketing manager at Café Direct. “That’s where a lot of that great exchange of information happens.” 

Introducing small workplace changes helps to grow a sense of community through constructive leadership. That hour-long meeting probably needs to be only half an hour some weeks.

It’s important to remember that a work perk that one person loves may not impress another, so variety is paramount. For every caffeine fiend who adores the barista machine there will be someone who values far more the early Friday finish they are offered once a month. 

2021 and beyond

An energised workforce is one that is stimulated and regularly pleasantly surprised through positive action from above, particularly when it is clearly designed to better the mental health of employees rather than wring more work out of them.

Too often of late the cold impersonal side of business has become the norm, where laptops, video calls, and chirping headsets punctuate the silence of days spent alone working from home. Kiwi businesses should run full tilt to embrace the opposite of that, where the technology is just a tool used by the group of humans employed to get the job done. 

Just as New Zealanders banded together to ensure our lockdowns were some of the shortest and most effective of the global pandemic to date so should we act as a collective whole to forge on with business success in 2021. With borders closed and employees’ minds under heavy loads, the best thing business leaders can do is guide their teams through these difficult times by remembering the importance of nurturing a socially positive work environment. 

It’s not a small or easy task but the results should speak for themselves. This is an important year for New Zealand, and it’s essential that every workforce in the country is set up to succeed from the top down – right down to the smallest detail. 

Café Direct provide barista-quality coffee machine rentals and sales and barista training to businesses throughout New Zealand. Interested? Contact us on 0800 836 346 or online for more information on rental and purchase options for your business.

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