If you’re aiming to boost morale in the workplace, it’s time to retire worn-out phrases like “We’re a family here” and “Your success is our success.” Unless you’re aiming for eye rolls and skeptical glances at the water cooler, that is. This guide covers seven ways to help you step up your talent management game and turn employee satisfaction into a living, breathing reality.

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Roadmap

• What Is Employee Morale?
• Methods To Boost Morale
• Importance of Morale Building
• How to Measure Morale
• Morale in a Remote Environment
• Next Steps

What Is Employee Morale?

Employee morale is the collective outlook and confidence employees hold regarding their work and workplace. It directly mirrors an organization’s health by gauging staff’s enthusiasm, engagement and motivation levels. High morale typically indicates that employers support their workforce and promote a thriving company culture.

Methods To Boost Morale

Boosting employee morale is essential for maintaining a positive work environment and enhancing productivity. Here are 7 effective ways to achieve this:

1. Promote Work-Life Balance

Are you noticing some employees mentally clocking out long before they complete their 9 to 5? These folks are probably doing what experts call “quiet quitting,” something that, per a recent Gallup report, 59% of the workforce is doing.

Another report sought to find the answer to why a big chunk of the workforce is debating whether it’s time to abandon ship; poor work-life balance topped the list.

The work-life balancing act is crucial for fostering a healthy workplace culture. Here are some methods to achieve this equilibrium:

• Acknowledge life events and personal losses: Recognize and celebrate birthdays and family milestones. Support employees through personal losses, fostering a compassionate workplace environment.
• Offer mental health days: Normalize and support employees’ dedicated time off for recharging and resetting their mental well-being when needed.
• Provide remote work options: Embrace flexible work by incorporating the remote or hybrid work models if you have a remote-capable workforce.
• Encourage employees to utilize time off: Cultivate a culture that actively encourages the workforce to use their well-deserved vacation days and time off.

2. Manage Your Managers

Do employees quit their jobs or leave bad bosses?

A bad boss can be a major source of stress. While work itself can be stressful, a recent Gallup study highlighted that leadership makes a difference when it comes to amping up morale.

• Provide training resources: Train managers to detect what low organizational morale looks like. Share the warning signs and equip them with training guides and manuals to help them do what they do best — efficiently manage their teams.
• Evaluate leadership skills: Check for any weaknesses in managerial decisions. Sometimes, poor management can be the root cause of worry, anxiety and stress among employees. Analyze how well managers convey company values from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy.
• Implement open-door policies: Enforce open-door policies to be more than just signs on the door. Encourage team leaders and managers to empathetically tune in to employees’ questions, doubts and suggestions.

3. Communicate Often

The phrase “communication is key” are golden words to live by in the business world, especially when poor communication can cost U.S. businesses $12,506 per employee each year.

Disconnect between employees and managers snowballs into missed opportunities, misunderstandings and eventually, ill regards held by employees.

Here’s how you can build morale by implementing better communication practices:

• Leverage communication platforms: Use communication apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams to create dedicated team channels for formal collaboration and water cooler group chats.
• Make transparent decisions: Ensure managers and supervisors communicate how the company makes decisions.
• Investigate employee complaints: Look into complaints objectively and conduct a thorough analysis to leave no stone unturned. Ensure you exclude even a hint of bias when cross-examining different individuals.
• Share company news: Make regular announcements regarding achievements, updates and policy changes to allow your team to see the larger picture.
• Conduct stay interviews: Hand the mic over to your long-tenured employees in an informal one-on-one conversation to uncover what’s motivating folks to stick around and find out what you can do to better support them.

4. Celebrate Wins

Taking the time and effort to acknowledge a job well done lets your employees know that their work matters.

First, identify how different employees prefer to receive praise and recognition. Some people prefer to keep their wins on the down-low, while others feel a sense of accomplishment when you’re loud and proud with praise.

No matter the method of conveying recognition, you should always take the chance to appreciate your employees.

• Give shout-outs: Call out top-performing employees during meetings to express gratitude or post about their accomplishments on team channels. Consider featuring your top employees in blog posts if your company runs an internal blog.
• Develop employee recognition programs: Encourage efforts and reward hard work with a system that helps identify and award the high achievers in your company.
• Provide custom rewards: Gift your employees with meaningful incentives and reward options. Notable examples include gift cards, hand-written thank you notes and extra paid time off.

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5. Support Your Team Professionally

If your employees can’t visualize a future at your company, they’ll start looking for opportunities elsewhere:

• Assign career development paths: Provide your employees with a clear roadmap to advance in their careers based on present levels of expertise.
• Develop succession plans: Create an ongoing mechanism to identify top performers who can be a great fit for future leadership roles.
• Offer reskilling and upskilling programs: Allow your workforce to upgrade their knowledge or learn new skills to climb the corporate ladder.
• Leverage learning management systems: Use a collaborative platform that allows employees to access their promotional paths and track real-time progress.

6. Build Trust

Here’s a thought-provoking stat: A recent report unveiled that 65% of U.S. respondents consider the workplace as their primary community hub, third to friends and family. Now, why does this matter? Communities thrive on trust, and if most folks are looking to their workplace for that sense of belonging and connection, then it’s clear that trust and transparency are vital for morale-building

• Schedule frequent check-ins: Let your employees voice their concerns and feedback in regular face-to-face meetings. Use video conferencing tools to engage remote teams, but more on that later.
• Collect feedback: To implement real change that benefits your workforce, you’ll need to practice active listening and encourage employees to provide sincere feedback. Develop engagement surveys and provide the option to anonymously submit responses when employees feel reluctant to share their opinions.
• Organize team-building activities: Arrange fun and interactive activities that foster collaboration and camaraderie. Whether it’s a virtual escape room challenge, a themed trivia night or an outdoor adventure, these activities help break down barriers and build trust.

7. Go Beyond the Surface

Small gestures count. Your team notices when you go the extra mile to ensure a safe and productive work environment where they can voice their concerns and feel safe.

• Encourage breaks from work: A recent Slack report uncovered that employees who regularly take breaks are 13% more productive than those who don’t. Providing time to recharge leads to higher productivity and greater job satisfaction.
• Set meeting-free days: Decide on a day in the week for no meetings or work calls. Setting a day aside with no interruptions provides your employees with the breathing space needed to get into a rhythm at work.
• Develop policies for service animals at work: Service animals perform specialized tasks that aid individuals with medically diagnosed disabilities. While you can reserve the right to deny requests, setting ground rules helps process reasonable accommodation requests by employees with disabilities.
• Evaluate existing time-off options: Evaluate the existing cap for maximum vacation days and paid time off accrual, and optimize your company’s leave policy based on the weaknesses you find. Include a system that makes floating holidays available for employees to use.

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Importance of Morale Building

Analyzing employee satisfaction, engagement and morale is like holding up a mirror in front of your company. Current employee morale levels are a direct reflection of employee satisfaction and overall productivity.

It’s no wonder that boosting workplace morale and employee engagement is the top priority for many talent acquisition teams.

Here’s how building morale lets you improve how your organization functions by focusing on your existing workforce.

1. Improves retention. When your workforce looks forward to coming in to work and enjoys being part of the team, it improves the likelihood that they’ll stay.
2. Boosts productivity. How employees feel about their work and workplace impacts their level of performance.
3. Fosters talent relationships. Clear communication and continuous collaboration build morale by strengthening professional relationships within your organization.
4. Builds culture. A valuable byproduct of improving morale is the goodwill it earns your company. Your corporate culture shines when existing employees enjoy being part of the team.

How to Measure Morale

Digital tools are your best friend for accurately measuring staff morale and determining what motivates each employee.
Below, we’ll spotlight how to calculate morale and the tools that make it possible:

1. Employee Surveys: Develop and deploy employee surveys to check the health of your organization periodically. Leverage employee pulse survey tools or employee engagement software to uncover what your workforce needs and how you can take steps to empower them.

2. Performance Metrics: Monitor productivity levels based on project completion rates, goals alignment, revenue generation and employee net promoter scores (eNPS). Access key data from performance appraisals and productivity reports from performance management systems. A dip in productivity can indicate low morale.

3. People Analytics: Rely on predictive modeling to comb through engagement and performance insights to automatically uncover trends and predict future problems and opportunities. Talent management systems provide actionable insights and data visualizations that aid decision-making.

With the right integrations and extensibility, an all-around talent management suite can manage everything from collecting feedback to analyzing insights to procuring interactive reports on existing engagement, satisfaction and sentiment levels. Taken together, this information will give you a more holistic view of what you can do to boost morale levels.

Refer to our talent management software features checklist to learn more.

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Morale in a Remote Environment

According to Gallup, the future of work is hybrid. According to their recent study, 27% of surveyed employees prefer to work fully remote jobs, 52% prefer hybrid work arrangements and only 21% want to continue working on-site. Additionally, the same study also found that employees with flexible work options are less burned out, more engaged and less likely to quit.

Research by the Economic Innovation Group showed that remote and hybrid work also provide better opportunities for disabled employees to work comfortably — a step in the right direction to achieve DEI goals.

While most of your employees embrace flexible work options, here’s the catch: plummeting staff morale caused by social isolation and Zoom fatigue.

Engaging geographically dispersed teams is a whole different ball game. Here’s what you can do to boost and maintain staff morale in a remote or hybrid setting:

1. Prioritize communication. Staying connected doesn’t mean excessive Zoom calls and virtual meetings. To keep your team in the loop, develop team group chats, schedule periodic one-on-one meetings and ensure that processes are as transparent as possible.
2. Encourage setting boundaries. Remote professionals, especially those working from home, encounter intertwined professional and personal responsibilities. Providing a system that lets employees update their status when they’re on breaks or ready to clock out helps define work boundaries.
3. Set up virtual water cooler channels. People have an innate desire to be social. While participation shouldn’t be mandatory, creating group chats for informal conversations and non-work discussions will provide a space for your employees to interact, collaborate and recharge.
4. Celebrate wins. Never skip the opportunity to give praise and celebrate wins. Appreciation for a job well done does wonders for boosting morale and conveys that you acknowledge your employees.
5. Provide skill development opportunities. Assign learning paths for your employees to advance in your organization. Schedule training sessions and offer online courses to avoid the feeling of stagnation.

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Next Steps

Low morale is like a tiny crack in a dam — if left unchecked, it can lead to a catastrophic flood eventually. So, if you’re spotting signs of morale slippage, it’s time to refer to this guide and use the right tools to nip those issues in the bud. To get things started, refer to our free requirement template to learn about must-have features and start your software search in the right direction.

Did we miss mentioning a method to boost morale? How did you tackle low morale in your organization? Was your strategy effective? Let us know in the comments!