19 Aug 5 Tips For Keeping Employee Morale High
How do you promote employee morale?
Employees are the heart of any organization. Keeping them enthusiastic about the company are your best public relations, marketing, and business development strategies. But how do you keep them at the forefront of priorities in balance with all the other day-to-day demands?
Five ways to keep employee morale high:
1. Remember they are people, not just workers. One of the ways to keep your employees feeling valued is by remembering moments that are important to them personally. For example, make a point of acknowledging every person’s birthday. You can also celebrate other events such as weddings, birth of a child or similar events. One company even sends a luggage tag to employees when they are going to go on vacation.
2. Connect everyone to the mission. From first day orientation to annual performance reviews, it is important that employees understand the core values and the key goals of the company. And equally importantly, they have to understand their role in achieving those goals. Employee morale is higher when people feel they are of value and actively contributing to something bigger than themselves.
[bctt tweet=”No matter how junior the position, everyone is there for a reason – make sure they know what it is.”]
3. Celebrate wins. Everyone worries about their company’s performance, their own role, and the economy in general. Some reports suggest that 80% of job-related communications are spent re-hashing bad outcomes. That is why it’s important to feed employee morale with good news when it comes.
Whether it is at the corporate level, departmental level, or individual level, when there is a great success, be sure to stop and acknowledge it. Take a sales team out to dinner. Announce the hard work of an individual in the company newsletter. And remember that junior people will be even more excited to see a senior person notice their contributions.
4. Offer transparency. Even though it is important to celebrate successes, it is also vital to let employees know on a regular basis what is going on with the organization. No one expects financial results to be optimal every quarter, but as with most things, when people are left in the dark, their mind will often go to the worst place.
In an office environment, that can really damage employee morale as people fear the truth and become distracted by their own imagination. Whether it’s through a corporate email, conference calls, or brown bag lunches, keep an open communication channel to your teams.
5. Promote wellness. An area overlooked by many organizations is the role that corporate support of health and wellness can play with regard to employee morale. A study showed that 77% of employees polled felt that company health and wellness programs contributed to a positive office culture.
From a bottom line perspective, such programs are more cost effective and have longer term benefits than, for example, cost of living raises.
[bctt tweet=”Use these 5 tips to keep employee morale high at your office.”]
Everyone knows that productivity has been repeatedly linked to employee morale.
As a result, it is more than just a worthy goal to make a corporate environment as positive possible. It is an actual investment that can directly relate to the company’s well being. Open communication, celebration of individual milestones and promotion of good health can all play a part.
And it’s easier to keep morale high, than it is to raise it. So if your company is in the enviable position of having a great relationship with its employees, by all means, be sure to preserve it.
