Everyone knows just how hated Mondays can be. But what you may not know is just how much low morale might affect your workers. It’s important to keep company morale high and boost productivity. And we’re here to give you some tips on how to do that.
- Make sure your employees know they’re appreciated
A quick email every once in a while might be appreciated, but what’s even better is to give a little more positive public recognition. This tip works in two ways. Public recognition works to give the individual employee you’re recognizing an added boost of morale, while also providing a goal for other employees to work towards. Just doing small things like adding an “employee of the month” award can work wonders in boosting morale.
- Listen to employees
Now, this may seem self-explanatory, but it goes far deeper than that. There are many ways to listen to your employees, from doing things like asking for feedback or always keeping your door open to talk. But this also means listening to their complaints, or taking a proactive approach on the employees that create a negative or hostile atmosphere. Remember to keep an ear out for what your employees are saying, and learn how to react accordingly.
- More vacation days
This may seem backwards, but in a way it makes more sense. If an employee has a relatively small amount of vacation days that they can use, their most likely avenue is to try and stockpile them until they can afford to have a major vacation. On paper, this sounds logical, but in practice what this leads to is workers who are just watching the clock, waiting until they can finally go on vacation. That doesn’t boost morale so much as it destroys it. Giving more vacation days encourages employees to take time off when they need it and not feel stressed that they’re wasting company time.
- More sick days
A good number of employees rely on their weekly paycheck in order to make car payments, insurance payments, or to pay other pricey bills. So, if illness strikes, there is no bigger morale killer than absolutely needing to come into work because you literally cannot afford to take a day off. Adding more sick days encourages employees to take a hassle free day off when they become sick and to, more importantly, not come in and possibly spread a disease around. If you think that one person with pneumonia is bad, wait until your entire workforce is out with it. Adding more sick days boosts morale and keeps public health up.
- Show you care
If Meghan from accounting has her baby, shoot her an email or give her a nice bonus for going through nine months of pregnancy. If John from HR has a birthday coming up, go to his cubicle and say happy birthday. If Jenny from the publishing division has a child who’s graduating, go and congratulate her, maybe even donate to the newly graduated. These all may seem like banal tasks, but they are major morale boosters. It’s treating people like they are more than just profit makers, and employees tend to respond well to that. If they want to keep coming back and working for you, then you’re doing something right.
- Celebrate Accomplishments
If you’re in charge of a magazine and they hit fifty monthly issues, celebrate it. It’s an accomplishment. Celebrating with your employees when something amazing happens is a surefire way to ensure boosted morale. You need to remember that they are the reason you are where you are as a company or team leader. Without that staff underneath you, you wouldn’t have anything.
There are many ways to boost morale in a company, these are only a few suggestions. But the best, most surefire way to always ensure that morale is high, is to treat your employees like people because they are people. They hurt like people, feel sad and happy like people, and need to eat like people. The quickest way to demolish any goodwill and morale in a company is to forget that.