You’ve probably heard that high employee morale in the workplace has many benefits. But, what exactly is it and how can one achieve it?
Employee morale is defined as the “workers’ general perspective, attitude, contentment, and confidence at work.” Employees with high morale are happy employees, and organizations with high levels of employee satisfaction have been shown to earn more and perform better than their competitors.
Clearly, employee morale is a major business matter, and it is one that we need to address regularly.
But before we proceed to tell you how you can improve employee morale at your workplace, we have some numbers we wanted to share with you.
According to British analytics firm Gallup, teams that have higher employee engagement can be up to 22% more profitable and can improve customer ratings by 10%, while teams with significantly lower employee engagement often experience 37% more absenteeism and are 60% more likely to make errors in their work.
So the question you need to ask yourself is – Do your employees look like they’re super excited every day when they come into the office?
If not, then this blog is here to help you figure out how to turn your disengaged and demotivated employees into happy ones! But before we dive into the main part, let’s try and understand why increasing the morale of employees is important.
Let’s get started!
Why Increasing Morale of Employees is Important?
In a workplace, companies, and teams with good morale always stand out. When others are straining to complete the bare minimum, these companies frequently thrive, surpass expectations, and do it with joy.
Here’s why boosting employee morale is crucial to your business and its growth:
1. Increased Teamwork
High staff morale leads to higher levels of job satisfaction and personal wellbeing. This then leads to people being more likely to collaborate and work together as a well-functioning, united group.
Employees with high morale have a more positive attitude towards their jobs. They also feel more confident in their roles and committed to your business, which motivates them to work more and achieve more as a team. After all, happy employees don’t want to leave, they want your business to succeed.
2. Better Employee Retention
For a growing company, the expense of high turnover may be daunting, especially when you’re continuously seeking to replace individuals with specific and sought skill sets. But with high morale, you don’t have to worry about this.
Employee retention and satisfaction are important performance factors for the success of your business. Contented employees prefer to stay with their organizations and maybe even settle into the job long term. This is why organizations with good morale have higher employee retention rates.
3. Better Office Relationships
When employee morale is good, employees are less likely to engage in negative behaviors or to experience work-related stress. Employee and management interactions increase as a result of the good morale in the workplace. Employees also feel more confident to ask for training and explanation of their aims and organizational objectives when they have a better connection with their superiors.
4. Improved Team Productivity
Employees that are enthusiastic about their jobs and like their working environment are more productive and are often willing to put in the extra effort. This is supported by a large body of research.
People’s productivity rises when they engage in happiness-inducing activities according to a study by the University of Warwick in 2014. Rath and Clifton, two researchers, discovered in 2004 that when employees had more good than negative interactions at work, they were considerably more productive.
Furthermore, research from the Wharton School of Business found a long-term correlation between happy businesses and higher shareholder returns.
All of this is proof that boosting employee morale and creating an environment a happy and safe work environment is crucial to the overall efficiency and productivity of your company.
Read More: Workplace Productivity: Definition, Importance, Tools & More!
5. Reduced Absenteeism
Surprisingly, not all sick days are taken for a genuine ailment. The fact is that some employees choose to take a mental health day or phone in sick because they lack the motivation to come to work. Employees tend to do this because they are dissatisfied with their position, the organization, and the work they are doing. Need we say more about the need for increasing morale in the workplace?
6. Increased Attention to Detail
Understandably, low morale causes people to lose interest in their professions, which leads to errors. This is true in all fields. Low emotions may have a detrimental influence on how our brains receive information and ultimately impacts our attention to detail. With better morale, employees will be able to give their full attention and effort on the job, thereby improving the quality of the results.
Now that you are aware of how important boosting employee morale is, take a look at these tips to bring out the best in your employees!
Effective Tips for Increasing Employee Morale
1. Be Transparent
Make every effort to be as open as possible. When morale is down, don’t try to bury the problems or avoid related discussions. That will only cause more harm.
As you work together to resolve any concerns, your employees will admire your honesty. Make sure to regularly inform them about company updates, changes in protocols, customer feedback, and more.
Transparency, truth, and openness spread knowledge that empowers people and businesses to do better work together to solve problems.
2. Promote Work-Life Balance
Most employees spend more than 5 hours each week at work worrying about their health, income, and family. Every week – that’s 5 hours of demoralizing anxiety. Solving this is easy, all you have to do is treat your personnel as human beings with significant personal lives.
Flexible hours, paid time off, self-care discussions, and work-from-home guidelines will all benefit workers in meeting their real-life demands at home. This allows people to bring their finest energy to work, which boosts morale.
3. Make Acknowledgment Public, Loud, and Proud
Are your employees important to you? Then, simply let them know!
According to Glassdoor, employees who receive praise from their boss are more likely to stay in their positions longer. But it’s not just about praises from bosses alone, according to a Psychology Today survey, 76% found peer praise to be highly motivating.
In a nutshell, the overall productivity and quality of work improve when you appreciate and acknowledge your employees and co-workers. So don’t be hesitant to give a pat on the back every now and then.
4. Re-evaluate Rewards and Bonuses
We all love perks, don’t we? About 53% of employees agree that workplace benefits make them feel appreciated. Examine your company’s bonuses, incentives, and rewards for a moment and ask whether your services promote the mental and physical well-being of your employees.
Consider Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). It is a counseling and consulting program which gives mental health benefits along with flexible PTO and other work-life balance incentives to your employees too.
Make sure that the benefits you provide can be well utilized by your employees while helping promote their mental and physical well-being. Having some options to choose from, may help your employees receive benefits that fit their preferences.
5. Recognize and Acknowledge Personal Events and Losses
Public acknowledgment is a surefire approach to improving employee satisfaction. But there’s more to it.
Employees may feel alienated in a culture of continual celebration when they suffer important personal life events or traumatic situations such as loss.
Send a confidential, personal remark to your team members to let them see that you notice and support them. It’s a simple but important method to form a personal bond and spread goodwill.
You can even meet with employees often to help mitigate any work-related anxiety or stress. Take a genuine interest in employees’ personal lives and help remove blockers and stressors. This is not only good for the employees, but it’s also good for business.
6. Foster Team Relationships and Connection
According to a research study, work connections are central to satisfied teams. Healthy work relationships influence to bring organizations’ increased profitability. Engaged employees are productive, more attuned to the needs of customers, and observant of processes, standards, and systems.
One approach which works well is to encourage employees to gain an understanding of each other in small ways. This could be in the form of informal chats or meetings between coworkers.
You could also have sessions where coworkers get together to explain the specifics of their role or a project they’re working on or describe a problem they’ve encountered or even something they’re excited about.
Read More: 15 Team Building Skills You Must Develop for Better Collaboration!
7. Encourage Professional Growth
Did you know that a whopping 70% of American employees are actively disengaged at work? Training and professional development is a surefire strategy to ensure your employees are happy, healthy, and excited to come into the office every day.
It’s important to remember that your employees don’t just exist in a professional capacity to serve your organization. They also require some form of personal and professional growth.
So make it a priority to provide opportunities for your employees to attend seminars, take classes, arrange meet-ups, conduct workshops, and training sessions, and other activities to help them grow as valued members of your company.
8. Organize Team-Building Activities
Positive morale is closely tied to how comfortable and connected employees feel about their team members, so it’s important to host team-building activities that will bring employees closer.
Try to brainstorm and think of creative ways to bring the team together, or ask your team to come up with activities they would like to do together.
If your team is working in an office together, you can host team lunches and happy hours. You could even host virtual happy hours for remote teams and encourage employees to have one-on-one video chat meetings. Show your team you care by celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, and other important milestones.
At the end of the day, a business sets out to make a profit. The stronger the teams are in your organization, the greater the quality of work output and ROI of the company.
Read More: 9 Virtual Team Building Games for Remote Employees!
9. Communicate Often
Improving employee communication has a great impact. So you should make it a point to communicate effectively and frequently with your employees about concerns and accomplishments that are significant to them. This one is important in terms of raising employee morale.
Make the most of every opportunity to communicate!
Begin by establishing clear and attainable goals for each employee. To keep track of progress and clear up any misunderstandings, schedule one-on-one sessions with them. Share good news from the organization with your employees, such as a new product in the works or a fantastic customer review.
You should also check in with your staff regularly and ask them how they feel about their job, co-workers, and management, whether they find any of their tasks difficult, and check in with them that they are satisfied with their job.
10. Encourage Break Times
According to studies, only one out of every five employees takes a lunch break, and white-collar professionals make up the largest part of this category. This suggests that far too many employees are having their lunch at their workstations!
People are most creative and innovative when they move in their surroundings, and thus being inside and in the same place adversely affects creative thinking.
Encourage your employees to take a five-minute break from their desks every hour. Let them grab a cup of coffee, or go for a walk outdoors to get some fresh air, stretch their muscles, or simply listen to some music. When you make this an office habit, they will be happier and more productive.
11. Give Performance-Based Incentives
It’s true that saying ‘Good job’ or giving a pat on the back are morale-boosting acts, however, giving something as solid as a performance-based incentive like bonuses or perks or promotions can have an immediate impact on the morale of an employee.
So instead of trying to hire more people, it is recommended to create career opportunities for your employees by promoting internally or paying them more. This will not only boost morale but also encourage employees to be more productive in their work.
12. Let Workplace Bullies Go
No one enjoys being bullied, and this is also true in an office or work setting. Workplace bullying not only affects happiness, but also hurts health, productivity, and self-confidence, leaving victims feeling stuck and powerless.
Bullying in the workplace has a negative influence on your company’s morale. It’s crucial to ensure that all of your employees know that there is a zero-tolerance policy for workplace bullying and that you follow through on these promises to guarantee that no one is treated unfairly at work.
13. Offer Flexible Work Hours
It’s difficult to find time for visits to the doctor, dry cleaners, and life in general with a job that takes away your entire day. That’s why the ideal productivity time isn’t the traditional 9-5, and it’s become more apparent in the last few years.
In the end, what’s more, important to you is that you get your employees’ best performance, whether that is at 11 in the morning or 11 at night.
Allowing your employees and management flexibility in their remote or hybrid work hours creates trust. Employees will be able to take control of their tasks as well as feed their passion for achievement by being able to organize both professional and personal daily activities without having to make sacrifices for every personal decision.
Conclusion
The cornerstone to building a successful company or business is high employee productivity and engagement. This goal is achieved only with the help of happy employees!
After all, your employees are the foundation of your company’s overall success and productivity. So you must give them the value they deserve.
Morale won’t improve immediately, but tiny changes over time will make a world of difference. And it doesn’t take much to boost your employees’ morale. It all boils down to small things like allowing them to leave on time, paying attention to them, and thanking them.
Follow the tips in this blog and simply make your employees feel valued! Good luck and adios!
Further Reads:
Employee Training: Definition, Importance & Tools to Use!
Employee Training Software and Tools for Efficient Employees!
Why Workplace Collaboration is More Important Than Ever?
12 Efficient Ways To Manage Teams This Year!
13 Tips to Empower your Employees
