Employee morale is one of those intangible factors that can make or break your company’s success. If you take it seriously, there are a few tangible actions you can take to move the morale “barometer” in a positive direction.
What is Employee Morale?
Defining employee morale can be difficult. And while it’s technically an “intangible,” it’s impacted by dozens of tangible factors. It’s the combination of everything that happens in the workplace (positive or negative).
“Morale is how your employees feel about coming to work every day, how they approach their assigned tasks, and their attitude about the direction the company is taking,” Zenovate explains. “Put simply, employee morale is the culmination of job satisfaction, life outlook, and attitude.”
Positive employee morale can improve your productivity, lower turnover, and help your brand cultivate greater satisfaction and loyalty among customers. Negative morale can suppress output and gum up the inner workings of your organization to the point that people no longer enjoy showing up to work each day.
If you want to maintain a healthy organization and show your people that you care about them, we recommend paying close attention to workplace morale.
Specific Ways to Boost Office Morale
Every workplace dynamic is unique, and each employee responds differently to certain factors. Having said that, the following tips will prove useful as you attempt to boost morale over the next several months:
- Invest in Relationships
The number one way to boost morale is by maintaining healthy relationships with each employee. Get to know them. Learn their interests and what makes them tick. What are their goals in life – personally and career-wise?
By investing in relationships with your employees, you’re accomplishing two things. First, you’re showing them that you care. (This is enough to cultivate long-term loyalty.) Secondly, it provides you with the necessary insights to apply feedback and make your company a more enjoyable place to work.
The easiest way to invest in relationships is to carve out one lunch hour each week to meet with an employee one-on-one. If you have 25 employees in your business, this means you’re meeting with each person twice a year for an hour that’s dedicated to nothing more than building relational capital.
- Provide Scheduling Flexibility
The days of clocking in at 9 a.m. and counting down the hours until you can clock out at 5 p.m. are over. People crave flexibility. And if you don’t give it to them, they’ll go find it elsewhere.
One of the best ways to provide flexibility is by giving each employee some choice in their hours (so long as they get their work done). One employee might like working 9-5. Another employee may prefer 7-3. Other employees might want to spend time with their families in the morning and work 11-7. By giving them the freedom to set their own hours (within reason), you create a culture where people feel supported and engaged.
- Invest in better Office Furniture
The average office worker will spend somewhere around 2,000 hours per year sitting at their desk. So while it may seem like a tiny detail, office furniture has a major impact on your team’s physical and emotional well-being. Investing in better office chairs, desks, and furniture is a good place to start.
You can always buy basic, off-the-shelf furniture, but we’d recommend shopping with a company that prioritizes quality and ergonomics. BTOD is one of the top-rated options.
- Support Creativity
Did you know that Google lets its employees devote 20 percent of their time to their own side projects? That’s right – they can spend the equivalent of one day per week working on projects that interest them. And guess what…it works! (Gmail and Google Maps were both started from employee side projects.)
You don’t have to be quite so generous with company time, but there’s something to be said for allowing employees to pursue brand-related projects that interest them. Not only does this improve their morale, but it also boosts creativity throughout the organization.
Build a Better Business
There’s a lot that goes into building a successful business. But if you want your core identity – your company’s DNA, if you will – to be healthy, it starts with prioritizing your employees so that they feel comfortable, cared for, and satisfied in the workplace.
Use this article as a starting point and expand on this foundation to account for factors that are specific to your organization.