Top 11 Best Ways to Boost Employee Morale
Your staff's morale is the backbone of your business. As an organization’s leader, you can’t afford to not take it seriously: not only do numerous studies show ... read more...that positive work cultures breed productivity (but more on that later), but it pays to keep your employees happy. After all, the happier they are, the harder they work, right? Here is a list of the top 11 best ways to boost employee morale.
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As a manager, you already have a lot on your plate (and then some). But, as you all know, people live in a technological age, and there's an app for that! Connecteam is a leading employee and company management app that provides your team with a strong, flexible, mobile-first communication and engagement platform. Here's how 36,000+ businesses like yours are using Connecteam to enhance employee morale at work:
- Recognize Employees: shout it from the rooftops! Be sure to send updates to the company to celebrate new hires, personal milestones like anniversaries, create an employee spotlight and allow employees to nominate their peers for awards. Then allow employees to comment and like the updates to drive additional engagement.
- Share Success: send updates on business milestones like bringing new customers, a new location, smashing the goal or KPI set, etc. Also celebrate success stories from customers with letters, pictures, videos, a story and more.
- Put Employees Front & Center: make decisions based on in-organizational surveys, launch a suggestion box to gain feedback and insights and introduce an open-door policy so employees can directly approach HR or senior management.
- Wellness & Benefits: provide all necessary information under one roof that employees can access whenever they need and allow your team to register for company events right from their mobile phone.
- Non-serious Communication: use nice GIFs for interactive content, allow people to like and comment to be part of the discussion, but in a structured safe organized environment. You can even start funny polls like who’s your favorite superhero?
- A Personal Touch: from senior leadership all the way down, you can share videos from the CEO to every last employee. This is an easy way for front line employees to approach senior management in a structured and controlled environment
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Concentrate on the positive! Employees who feel really valued have higher self-esteem and are more productive. How Full Is Your Bucket demonstrates that employees who receive regular, positive acknowledgment will experience the following benefits:
- Higher productivity
- Better engagement levels
- More loyalty to the company
- Higher morale
- Better customer satisfaction.
When it comes to creative and simple ways to enhance employee morale, employee recognition is a no-brainer. In fact, Gallup concluded that "Workplace acknowledgment stimulates, creates a sense of success and makes employees feel valued for their work. Not only does recognition promote individual employee involvement, but it has also been shown to increase productivity and commitment to the firm, resulting in higher retention."
Finally, employee recognition is low-cost and high-impact. As previously said, Connecteam's employee all-in-one communication tool enables you to share employee recognition with the simple click of a button. For example, shine the spotlight on employees and their successes by telling fun and engaging stories about them, celebrate personal milestones together such as meaningful anniversaries, newborns or adoption, or even birthday wishes, allow employees to nominate their peers for awards, and even welcome new team members.
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According to research, barely one in every five persons takes a lunch break, and white-collar workers are the least likely to do so. That suggests that far too many employees are eating lunch at their desks! You know that when people modify their environment, especially when they expose themselves to a nature-like environment, creativity and invention occur. Being inside, in the same place, is therefore adverse to creative thinking. It's also harmful to the rumination required for ideas to simmer and gestate, allowing a person to have a 'aha' moment. - Kimberly Elsbach, a University of California professor who researches workplace psychology.
Urge your employees to leave their desks for at least five minutes per hour. Get a cup of coffee, go for a walk outdoors to get some fresh air, stretch your muscles, and so on. When you make this a habit, you will be happier and more productive since you will feel refreshed. According to studies, the longer you stay at work, the more crucial it is to go out of the office, even if it's only for a few minutes, because creativity suffers when you don't change environments.
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Challenges are one of the best ways to boost employee morale. When a job is too simple and does not require the employee to learn anything new, he can quickly become bored with doing the same activities. In contrast, if the job is too challenging, he may become disheartened and give up. You must establish a balance if you want to keep staff morale high. Your employees should have the tools, training, and support they need to complete their tasks efficiently. At the same time, their tasks should be difficult enough to provide them with a sense of accomplishment.
As a result, you should regularly put them through things they have never done before. Let them take entire ownership of the process and the results when you offer them a role or project. Demonstrate your belief in their abilities and knowledge. And that you have faith in them to seek assistance as needed. Furthermore, when they reach out to express any concerns or issues, encourage them to come up with solutions and recommendations. This will help their professional development and engage them on a far deeper level than allowing management to make all decisions.
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Staples discovered in a poll of employees from diverse locations and industries that workers want employers to focus on their health, with 41% prepared to take a wage loss if their business invests more in their well-being. Pushing your employees to their limits may appear to be a smart method to boost production, but it is more likely to have the opposite impact. That will not work in the long run if your employees start resigning and burning out as a result of stress.
As an employer, you should strive to assist your employees in reducing stress and achieving a healthy work-life balance. Consider providing an EAP in addition to controlling their workload and providing flexible work options (employee assistance program). Such a program can assist employees in dealing with both personal and professional stress.
Encourage employees to take breaks and get away from their work at regular times throughout the day. Kids can use this time to play a small game, go for a stroll, stretch their muscles, or eat something. And the rest will allow them to be totally productive when they return to work. -
It is critical for employee morale to have an inspirational vision and to communicate it at all times. Workers in many businesses may not understand the "why" behind corporate objectives, nor do they understand how their own work contributes to those objectives. According to a recent survey of HR and communication leaders, 20% cite "lack of clarity from the top" as one of their top challenges.
When employees are unsure of what is expected of them and why, it is difficult for them to put their hearts and souls into their work. Or even to know what the appropriate thing to do is. For example, despite the aim of employing a local product, your manufacturing team may make an expensive purchase of imported equipment. This can result in considerable financial or brand-reputation loss.
So make it a point to communicate your vision to employees on a frequent basis. An excellent method to achieve this is to keep them up to date on milestones that get your company closer to its goals and ideals. They may include rewarding an employee who undertook an effort that resonated with your vision, celebrating a new client acquisition, moving to a new site, or acknowledging a new client acquisition.
In addition, create a content library where all of your employees can readily access guidelines and material relevant to your goals, vision, and values. For example, Blink includes a content management portal where administrators may effortlessly upload or build stunning, responsive pages and documents.
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In a survey of 6500 employees worldwide, Gartner discovered that 75% anticipate an increase in workplace change initiatives over the next three years. Change is difficult, but it is vital for any firm to adapt and remain competitive. Change is unavoidable, whether it's a merger or a change in leadership. Yet, if the change is not handled and communicated appropriately, it can have a negative impact on workplace culture and employee morale.
When you institute a hiring freeze, for example, existing employees may think that you will begin downsizing soon. And having their employment in jeopardy will sap their motivation. As a result, it is your responsibility to effectively manage this change and explain to employees that their jobs are safe. Always design, follow, and share a complete plan when making any change. You and your team must be clear about the reasons for the change, its scope, what employees should expect, and what they need not be concerned about.
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Research by the Work from Home Employee Experience Index has shown that employees around the world prefer working from home to working in the office. That being said, 39% of teleworkers also say they work more hours, compared to 31% of employees in the office.
Flexibility to take care of both personal and professional responsibilities is key to work-life balance for Kane Carpenter, practice lead for employer branding and growth strategies at Daggerfinn, a growth strategies consultancy. For instance, one component of work-life balance for him is the opportunity to occasionally go to the grocery store at 3 p.m. when it’s less crowded, but then he works a little later in the evening to make up time. “To me, work-life balance, fundamentally, it means flexibility,” Carpenter said.
Matthew Ross, co-founder and COO of mattress review site The Slumber Yard, says he and his co-founder come from the world of investment banking, where long hours were the norm. “However, in the case of our company, we were afraid that these long working hours would exhaust our employees and generate resentment. When one of their employees resigned, probably due to burnout, the manager said: “We knew we had to change our working methods to prevent other employees from leaving the company. Following an IT audit, Matthew and his partner discovered that their employees were working outside office hours. So they implemented a new rule: no work emails between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m.
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According to a study conducted by Slack on the future of work, 80% of employees want to know more about how decisions are made within their company. 87% say they want their next business to be transparent. It is impossible to achieve a good level of employee satisfaction without trust in leaders. Indeed, your team will be less inclined to communicate or get involved if they do not feel comfortable expressing themselves freely at work.
At Culture Amp, a leading employee experience and analytics platform, trust is at the heart of the company's values. These include, for example, “Trusting others to make decisions”, “Having the spotlight on others”, “Having the courage to be vulnerable” and “Learning faster through feedback”. The company also uses a Slack channel called #super-failed where employees (affectionately known as “campers”) talk openly about their mistakes and the lessons they learned from them.
They also have a #CEO channel where Culture Amp Founder and CEO Didier Elzinga answers questions via Q&A polls. At the start of the health crisis, the director used the #director-general channel to stay in touch with campers. He published two-minute videos every day, in which he shared his observations, what was happening within the company and the actions taken to deal with the situation. These messages were a simple and effective way to stay in touch during such a difficult time, and the success of this initiative has led to greater transparency as the company continues to work remotely.
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Encourage employee-led initiatives is one of the Best Ways to Boost Employee Morale. PwC launched its “Be Well, Work Well” program dedicated to the well-being of employees, because employees had already turned independently to well-being activities and the different ways to integrate health into the workplace. Following the success of a course on physical, mental and emotional well-being for senior managers, the company decided to launch a health-themed initiative across the company.
The “Be Well, Work Well” program addresses six themes related to well-being: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, financial and social health. Following the transition of their employees to telework, the initiative has evolved. For example, it now offers online psychological support and reimbursement of emergency childcare costs. The program also includes a list of habits that team members can use to build healthy habits. Thanks to this initiative, the company has not only proven that it cares about its employees, but also that it is attentive to their needs.
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Gifts ? Testimonials of recognition? Educational resources ? All these small gestures have a strong impact on the morale of the workforce: it is a good way to show them that their leaders appreciate them. Take graphic design platform Canva, consistently ranked as one of the best companies to work for in Australia. Canva has adopted a hybrid way of working, and the company has also implemented a policy that employees are only required to come into the office eight times a year.
Therefore, the way they show gratitude to each other has changed. Recognition has become a ritual in teams thanks to Disco, an online cultural platform for distributed teams. The application integrates with Slack and allows employees to send well-deserved thanks to their colleagues. Additionally, the company subsidizes mindfulness and meditation apps, and it also has a process in place called “Thank You Messages.” Employees can create cards on the platform to print them and then have them delivered to their colleagues.