How To Encourage More Positivity at Work (20+ Tips)

Almost all employees agree: it’s important to feel respected, valued, and take care of your mental health at work. 92% of employees valued working in places which protect their emotional and psychological wellbeing, and 95% value employers who prioritize their mental health.

Having a positive attitude at work doesn’t just boost employee morale. Employee engagement and productivity are higher when people are happier at work. It can help with career development, create stronger relationships, improve team collaboration, and more. If employees are happy, they’ll enjoy working at your organization, leading to increased productivity and higher morale.

As an HR professional, you interact with everyone from the executive team to the newest hire. Your good or bad moods can impact the entire company. You and your HR team need to set the right example and maintain a positive attitude at work as much as possible.

In this guide, we consider the ways you can maintain a positive attitude at work and encourage positivity in your workplace. We're all about smoothing out your HR tasks so you can focus on what really matters—building a team that rocks together.

What Is a Positive Mindset In the Workplace?

You might be able to brighten your colleagues’ day with a smile, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore problems on the regular just to keep the peace. It’s important to address issues and raise concerns where necessary.

Instead, having a positive mindset at work means always looking to improve the culture around you by contributing to the best of your ability.

What Does Positivity in the Workplace Look Like to Others?

People with positive mindsets are easy to spot—they’re the ones you like to spend time with. These employees are focused and not distracted by small inconveniences. They’re also not ones to engage in water-cooler gossip because they have other people’s best interests at heart.

Doesn’t that sound like a person you’d like to know? With that in mind, here are some ideas on how to be more positive at work.

14 Ways to Be Positive At Work

Here are our suggestions to help you integrate a little more ‘seize the day’ into your working life.

1. Develop a Strong Morning Routine

Staying positive during the day starts early on. Whatever puts you in a good mood, simply try to do that thing every day. That could mean moving your body in a way that suits you or eating something tasty to fuel you for the morning ahead.

Listen to your favorite music or podcast on your commute or make sure to give your loved ones an extra squeeze before they start their day. The small things really do matter when setting up that positive mindset.

At the same time, try cutting out morning habits that cause stress or set the wrong tone for the day—like checking your phone first thing in the morning. Weed out the negative and replace it with the positive to make your morning routine serve you.

2. Practice The Art of Being Grateful

Keep a gratitude journal or make a point to acknowledge things you’re thankful for each day. Staying positive at work is easier when you lead with gratitude. Try expressing your gratitude verbally regularly or carry out random acts of kindness to pay it forward. You’ll feel good about yourself while boosting employee morale if you’re practicing gratitude in the workplace (oh, and you just might live a little longer).

3. Make Time for Your Health

Make your health a priority—both physical and mental health. Exercise, relax, and meditate regularly. It could be as simple as adding in some extra steps and taking the stairs or booking a gym class that you enjoy.

As with most physical activity, you may not be in the mood for it sometimes. But you don’t have to strive for perfection—little and often works best.

You should also try to maintain a healthy diet, stay properly hydrated, and try to get enough sleep. Health and having a positive mindset go hand-in-hand. The more you look after yourself physically, the better you will feel mentally, too.

4. Stay Curious and Keep Learning

It could be a personal interest or a skill at work—continuous learning can help you to be more positive. This is because it helps the brain create new neural connections. Learning new skills is also a great way to improve your cognitive abilities.

5. Rest Your Mind and Let Your Spirit Catch Up

It’s too bad people don’t actually come with batteries included. Because that way, we would know when we absolutely must recharge. As it is, far too often, we keep going until we’re burned out.

Take regular breaks throughout your workday, and when you’re really lagging, use your vacation days. Giving yourself a chance to recharge will make you more productive and help you in staying positive.

6. Maintain a Healthy Balance

Make time for the most important people in your life, namely your family and loved ones. If your personal life is in order and your relationships outside of the workplace are healthy, it’ll spill over into your job in a good way (but keep in mind that the opposite is also true). Never overlook the importance of a healthy work-life balance.

7. Unlock the Power of Workplace Connections

Make sure you start every office friendship on a positive note—don’t try to relate with someone over something you hate. Look for similarities in your interests outside of work and go out of your way to offer positive affirmations for your work colleagues.

When you approach your coworkers with kindness and generosity, they’ll likely do the same. This can contribute to the overall positive company culture. Workplace friendships not only help maintain work positivity, but also help with employee engagement, too.

8. Break Free from Toxic People

As you’re developing friendships with coworkers, gravitate towards people who help you stay positive. And you should be friendly with everyone—but be careful that you don’t spend most of your time with those who are gossipy or disgruntled. They may start to wear off on you, sending you into a spiral of negativity.

9. Make It Yours: Personalize Your Space

It may only be a small touch, but your environment influences you. So don’t be afraid to personalize your workspace. Surround yourself with things that make you happy—photos or movie memorabilia can help promote that positivity at work. Otherwise, try to convince those above to encourage personalization in shared spaces. Photos from team events, awards on display or decorative touches can help encourage some positivity.

10. Empower Your Mind: Navigate Your Emotions

A huge part of cultivating a positive mindset is managing your thoughts and emotions. This comes down to how you perceive things. Thinking about how much you must do can make you feel overwhelmed before you’ve even started.

Taking action, even if it’s small, reduces negative feelings as it lets you gain some control of the situation. Break up projects into smaller tasks, and work on the tasks individually, crossing them off as you go. Write things down, either on paper or on your computer. This will help to improve focus and organization.

Decide how you’re going to react to a situation ahead of time. Think of it as having plenty of opportunities to prove yourself in your workplace.

There’ll always be meetings or clients who increase your workplace stress. But if you decide ahead of time to keep a positive attitude at work and not let them get to you, you’re more likely to achieve that. Put yourself in the driver’s seat—not your emotions.

11. Focus Forward: Set Goals You Can Achieve

One key to staying positive is to set achievable goals. But if your goals aren’t realistic, you’ll always feel behind, like you’re failing. Make sure you’re being realistic with your expectations for yourself and set smaller, tangible goals to work towards that feed into the bigger picture. For example, if you’re at a junior level, having a goal to be the CEO within six months is unrealistic.

Instead, work on smaller goals that could help you work towards your ultimate goal. Those could be increasing productivity, improving communication skills, or expanding professional networks, for example.

12. Unleash Your Power: Focus on What You Do Best

You were hired for your job because there are certain things you do well. One of the ways to remain positive is to focus on those things and keep your head up. You can maybe remind yourself that you’re the person people go to if they need support with something tricky or that you were asked for by name by a client. From that place of confidence, you should select one or two weaknesses at a time to work on.

Trying to tackle the whole list at once is a quick way to burn out, lose confidence, and become pessimistic. On the other hand, making small improvements over time as you lean on your strengths is a great way to stay positive at work. Remember, slow and steady wins the race.

13. Dare To Dream: Embrace Your Creative Spirit

Creating something—whether it be a piece of art or an innovative HR solution—can help you feel satisfied in your abilities. When you’re creating something that improves the wider organization, too, everyone will benefit. Others will be grateful for you, you’ll be grateful for their accolades, and they’ll be grateful for your positivity at work.

14. Be Open to Optimism

Here at BambooHR, two of our company values are “Be Open” and “Assume the Best”. We believe that being upfront and authentic is a better way to resolve issues, and assuming good intentions and seeking to understand diverse perspectives benefits everyone. The best part? Transparency and assuming the best actually strengthens relationships.

But that doesn’t mean we sugarcoat feedback when its needed or ignore problems when they come up. It does mean we give our teams the space to learn, grow, and collaborate without the pressure of micromanagement.

15. Celebrate the Small Things

While some naturally have an optimistic personality, it’s possible to train your brain to look on the bright side.

One way to do this is to practice celebrating small victories. The science of celebration is clear: recognizing your accomplishments improves confidence and self-esteem, boosts your mood, and even leads to more success down the road.

7 Ways Businesses Can Cultivate a Positive Work Environment

As an HR professional, you might not only be looking for ways to increase your own positivity, but that of people across your organization, too. We’ve listed a few suggestions to help you cultivate a positive work environment.

1. Empower the Employee Journey

Giving employees the flexibility and autonomy they desire helps create a culture of positivity at work. By doing this, we encourage them to do the same with coworkers and employers. But be careful not to confuse kindness for flexibility.

It’s become increasingly popular for employers to enforce shorter workweeks to help with maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Sometimes employers enforce these rules a little too harshly. Doing so can lead to employee anxiety—creating the very problem the policy is meant to overcome.

2. Encourage Growth: the Power of Meaningful Feedback

Employees need feedback to help them engage, and they need it frequently. Up to 94% of employees who receive positive recognition each day feel satisfied or very satisfied with their company.
On the flip side, when employees feel left in the dark at work, they’re left to their own imagination, which can lead to worry and dissatisfaction.
Giving employees feedback and help regularly not only gives them the confidence they need to do good work. It can also help avoid potential pitfalls which could lead to serious individual and team-wide problems.
3. Mix It Up
No matter how much employees keep a positive attitude or how rigid the routine of their job is, everyone needs the occasional diversion from the norm. To paraphrase an old line, all work and no variety make for dull employees. Or as the Italian scholar Petrarch said, “sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.”

Managers should take this into consideration as they assign projects. Whenever possible, give employees a variety of projects that fit reasonably into the job duties. The amount of variety you can provide an employee will obviously depend on their role, but employees will be in better spirits when you keep things fresh.

4. Inspire Collective Growth

There are plenty of benefits to collaborative employee engagement, but one of the most obvious is that it allows employees to work together. Working alone all day can lead to boredom and general malaise. However, interacting with employees forces us to open up and break out of a funk.

When employees collaborate with people they like, they’re quick to lift each other when down. Sometimes they lift, and sometimes they’re lifted. This is especially true when managers intentionally team up with employees they know are good influences on each other.

5. Nourish Connections and Fuel Team Spirit at Lunch

It can be easy to only view coworkers as just that—workers. But when we share our breaks and lunches, we see each other in a different light. We see each other as regular people, we have fun together, strengthen bonds, become friends and boost employee morale.

That way, for example, when we return to work after a lunch break, we’re not just helping one of our coworkers get an assignment done. We might also be helping a parent of two complete a project they’ve put a lot of sweat and tears into so that they can make it to their child’s basketball game.

6. Champion Compassion in the Face of Employee Illness

Encourage employees to take care of illnesses responsibly. This means that you take illnesses—and all their side effects—seriously. When employees are sick, encourage them to take the day off or let them work from home whenever possible.

When you’re sympathetic to sick employees, they’ll be grateful, and their attitudes toward their colleagues and the organization will be more positive.

Never push employees too hard when they’re feeling under the weather, for several reasons:

• Their work may suffer
• They’ll stay sicker for longer
• They may begin to resent you

HR needs to ensure that positivity and team collaboration prevails in the workplace all year long. During the winter months, when moods are naturally down, it’s nothing short of vital. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how to stay positive at work, or at least what a positive attitude in the workplace looks like.

7. Make Celebration the Norm

Employee recognition and celebrating their successes (big and small) can help create a positive work environment. And this doesn’t have to be expensive bonuses either. A simple thank-you will show them their efforts are appreciated.

When you begin to offer more frequent, sincere recognition, many people will respond in kind. Soon, your whole organization can embrace a culture of positivity and employee engagement. Recognition can help with their confidence and carry them forward to the next success.

Pioneer Change in Your Organization

Now you have the steps, it’s time to put them into practice. Doing so will boost employee engagement, foster team collaboration, and encourage positive workplace mindsets.

Harness the power of good company culture and use it to drive positive change in your organization. This could inspire employees to strive harder, win those extra clients, or produce their best work. Doing so could return good results for your organization.