6 Effective Ways to Boost Employee Morale

As workplaces adjust to the “new normal,” businesses are prompted to address the shifting needs of their employees to facilitate collaboration, engagement, and productivity. Read on for essential tips and strategies to re-energise your team, while boosting overall employee morale and job satisfaction.

The global pandemic has a lasting impact on the future of workplaces, bringing a major shift to the labour market and employee retention. Businesses are expected to meet with greater challenges in the competitive landscape, from talent acquisition, to re-building motivated workforce, with additional pressure to boost revenues, while cutting down costs. Maintaining company culture and employee morale is yet another struggle for most organisations. During the pandemic, nearly two-thirds of employers expressed it as one of their most prominent challenges.

Strengthening workplace morale is fundamental to building a successful business, as it has a staggering impact on the employee’s productivity and overall performance.

Companies can make the necessary changes to their organisational culture to promote a healthy work culture by revamping their retention strategy, while providing their workforce with greater growth opportunities. Here are some effective ways for businesses to build employee morale, while making the necessary shift to their workplaces, helping their teams achieve productivity goals and overall job satisfaction.

6 Effective Ways to Boost Employee Morale

Manage Change Effectively

Change has become the “new constant” in the competitive business landscape. It is forecasted that nearly 75% of global companies are looking to expand their focus on “organisational change initiatives” over the next three years, making it paramount for them to remain alert and prepared to tackle the inevitable.

Businesses should manage new changes more effectively to maintain a healthy and transparent workplace culture. Starting with ensuring that all information is communicated in a direct and timely manner, to empower employees within their roles and to drive a greater impact under any new reform.

Whether it is a minor shift in management or a major merger in place, it is imperative that companies carefully strategise and oversee their communication to take better control of the situation, while maintaining transparency throughout the process, to avoid any confusion, misinformation, and conflict of interests.

Prioritise Team-building Initiatives

Employees with better workplace relationships and an active involvement in company pursuits are more likely to demonstrate higher levels of morale. Research by the Oxford University’s Saïd Business School showed that happiness and productivity work in correlation with one another, a satisfied workforce is 13% more efficient, and can yield better outputs. Management should ensure the workers are provided with essential opportunities to engage, interact, and build a rapport with one another.

Organising regular team-building activities helps businesses build closer bonds between their employees, allowing them to become better acquainted with each other and the company culture. Encouraging employees to participate in outside-work gatherings can also help evoke a greater sense of community.

Companies can further implement team objectives to motivate employees in achieving collective goals, while rewarding those with outstanding performance to offer them a competitive drive, and strengthen overall morale.

Invest in Training and Growth Opportunities

To increase workplace morale, businesses must first evaluate their workforce’s unique strengths and weaknesses, ensuring they attain the necessary support to facilitate growth within their roles, and their future. Over 94% of employees have shown a greater willingness to stay with companies for longer periods, given the right opportunities and better investments into their career development. Organisations providing their workers with such benefits have reported higher retention rates of up to 34%.

Offering your team skill training workshops and better growth opportunities can yield additional benefits, by boosting your organisation’s employee engagement, performance, innovation, and strengthen company culture.

A great way to help new employees with workplace development is by providing onboarding training programmes to better equip in their roles and career growth, and even consider offering tuition reimbursements for those looking to expand their skills.

Invest in Training and Growth Opportunities

Build a Culture of Value and Recognition

A positive workplace culture is a telltale sign of a thriving business, built on healthy communication, viable opportunities, and most importantly, a genuine value and recognition of their employees. Modern-day labour forces are substantially motivated to deliver better outcomes when provided with a personalised sense of acknowledgement and encouragement at their workplace, which stems from effective management.

As competition toughens for talent acquisition, it is becoming increasingly important for organisations to discard outdated ways of showing their employees that they are being valued and recognised. This means going beyond offering extrinsic rewards. Workers expect to be challenged and driven within their roles for them to continue improving their performance, and deliver higher output levels.

Celebrating employee key milestones and successes helps boost workplace morale, while allowing one to express their gratitude and manifest growth in their career and future in a company.

Build a Culture of Value and Recognition

Audit Your Technology Stack

Technology is vital to the success of every modern business, affecting everyday operations from communication and collaboration, to marketing, advertising, and more. Such digtial portals have opened countless opportunities for companies to optimise their workflows, while easing the burden of completing repetitive tasks, which further improves employee engagement and productivity.

However, it is just as important for organisations to perform regular audits on their technology stack to ensure the effectiveness of each tool, and whether or not it works in alignment with their company needs. Streamlining and simplifying tech usage can additionally enable employees to eliminate the “excess procedures” of learning new softwares and following the programme guidelines. This helps workers reduce their workload significantly, while allowing them to focus on other major tasks where they can make a greater impact.

Incentivise CSR Initiatives

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) now has a greater impact on how an organisation retains its workforce. Employees are becoming increasingly aware of the eminence of their roles in a company, and are doing their part by supporting global causes, while operating as watchdogs to ensure businesses execute their CSR commitments. Over 51% of workers have expressed their objection to working with brands that do not have strong social and environmental commitments.

Companies that are driven towards a greater cause, and are constantly looking to make an impact, offer their employees a similar sense of purposefulness, which helps strengthen their motivation and determination to achieve collective goals. Incentivising CSR initiatives at workplaces can empower their staff to become more positive about the value they create and influence they have on corporate decisions. Furthermore, this allows workers to introduce charitable causes that they are passionate about for company team-building activities.

Incentivise CSR Initiatives