Employee morale is the overall mood, outlook, and attitude of your workers in regard to your company. Healthy morale improves workplace culture, boosts productivity, and helps with employee retention. But how can you keep employee morale high? Here are a few tips.
How Can You Boost and Keep Up Employee Morale?
Monitor Morale
Meet regularly with your employees both one on one and in teams. Collect feedback and suggestions for improvement. Be ready to act on these suggestions when possible to create positive change.
Help Workers Find Meaning
Employee morale goes up when team members feel genuinely connected to their work. They need a sense of purpose and a feeling that what they do matters. This is a highly individualized topic, so you’ll need to work with each employee to find what is most meaningful to them.
Offer the Right Tools
Morale will suffer if your employees are working with outdated tools and technologies. Provide them with everything they need, from collaborative software to ergonomic workstations, to boost their success.
Also, consider offering tools to improve workers’ mental fitness. These might include job coaching, company training, and access to mental health services.
Train Your Managers
Managers have a direct, day-to-day impact on employee morale. Teach them how to be more effective leaders. Prioritize communication and transparency, as well as feedback and recognition. Encourage an open-door policy in which team members can go directly to their manager with any issues that might arise.
Build Career Development Plans
Work with your employees to chart career pathways within your organization. Include details on how promotions are determined and what they need to accomplish to reach the next level.
Balance Autonomy and Accountability
Autonomy is key to employee morale, but that doesn’t mean you have to let team members run wild. Build guardrails to keep people on track and then give them the freedom to operate independently within those boundaries. For example, you might allow flexible scheduling but require employees to remain accountable by logging their hours.
Implement Reward Systems
Employee recognition and reward programs can dramatically boost morale. These can be as formal as paid bonuses for reaching certain milestones or as informal as publicly calling out excellent work during a meeting. Even a simple thank you can go a long way.
Need New Talent?
If you’re ready to bring on new temp-to-hire, temporary, or permanent employees, Pirate Staffing is here for you. Learn what we can do to help, and then contact us to get started.