Five to Thrive Week 1

UMD’s Thriving Workplace Initiative (TWI) seeks to ensure that the University of Maryland is a great place to work by providing tools and support to foster engaged, inclusive and empowered faculty and staff across campus.

Each Monday, its “Five to Thrive” list, debuting today, offers five strategies compiled from research and experts and crowdsourced from our own UMD community at TWI events to help your workplace thrive.

Want to build a Thriving Workplace? Here are this week’s tips:

• Reconsider how you connect. If there’s a question in your email, consider asking it by phone or face-to-face instead of hitting the “send” button.
   
• Did you screw up? Take responsibility—don’t blame the situation or the person. Sincerity is the best path to rebuilding trust.
   
• Before buying materials or equipment, get input on new tools and materials from the person who will use them every day.
   
• Consider “homing from work”: Let employees carve some time to address personal needs at work, removing mental baggage so they can focus on the job.
   
• Focus beyond the what: Communicate to employees the who, when and, in particular, why of job goals and purpose.

Want more tips? Visit the Thriving Workplace Resource Library or sign up for Food for Thought Friday, which delivers strategies to your inbox each week. Just send an email to thrivingworkplace@umd.edu with the subject listserv to subscribe.