Employer Brand

21 Fun Ways to Boost Employee Morale

What’s more important than a good boss? A good working team that grows together in a healthy atmosphere. Maintaining good employee morale is an important metric that has an enormous impact on the productivity of your workspace. It is described as the attitude, satisfaction, and overall outlook that the employees feel at the workplace. The more motivated and satisfied your employees are, the more likely they will provide your company with their excellent work and efforts.

According to a Forbes article, it costs employers about $160 billion for paid sick leave annually. But what is interesting is that this loss decreases the risk of prolonged health problems and stress in their employees, resulting in an effective productivity rate. These little things are the ones that should matter the most.

Although you cannot control the way an employee feels at work, you can, of course, influence it. Changing the environment around your office and transforming it into a positive space might be an excellent way to improve employee morale.

What should scare you is low employee morale in your workplace. This results in the hindrance of growth, and productivity and, sometimes, lowers the retention rate.

What Is Employee Morale?

Employee morale refers to team members’ views, satisfaction, attitude, and confidence at work. It reflects the health of the company’s culture, how effectively employees are supported, and how engaged people are. It indicates the tone of the workplace. While companies cannot provide positive morale to their employees, they may be significant contributors to employee morale.

When team members feel cared for and supported by their employer, it encourages intrinsic drive and provides an environment in which they may perform to their full potential.

Employees may suffer poor morale for reasons unrelated to corporate cultures, such as personal problems or domestic troubles, but these are generally isolated events that do not reflect company morale as a whole.

Why Positive Employee Morale Is Important?

Boosting employee morale is a vast deal. It affects the overall growth of your company or organization. Let us now see why it is important to have positive employee morale.

1. Better Quality of Work

It is more likely that your employees are going to produce excellent work quality with high morale.

2. Increase in Retention Rate

Retention rates and employee satisfaction play a significant role in the success of a business. A study showed that HR professionals noticed an 89% retention increase with flexible work arrangements in companies.

3. A Strategic Advantage in the Times of Crisis

The market has its trials and errors. It is easier to tackle a crisis with a team of individuals who have high morale.

4. Great Productivity and Efficiency

One of the significant benefits of boosting employee morale is the visible increase in productivity and efficiency. Providing an environment where employees enjoy working will surely end up in positive improvements.

5. Attracts Talent

Good workplace morale is more likely to attract exceptional talent. It is easier to retain employees, and this benefits the company’s growth.

6. Team Work Makes the Dream Work

The general positivity around your workplace is more likely to motivate you to collaborate and function well with your teammates. Happy employees are going to think about the company’s benefits and its growth.

7. Improvement in Office Relations

Relationships between managers and employees improve when there is healthy workplace morale. This favors growth, engagement, performance, and productivity.

8. Increased Creativity

In the absence of negativity, a person feels more relaxed. It is more likely that a person will come up with more innovative solutions to complex problems.

9. Decrease in Absenteeism

Mental health is closely connected to physical health. The better a person feels emotionally, the better they will feel overall, which will reduce your employee’s sick leaves.

10. Reduced Costs

A company with positive employee morale will see lesser absenteeism, stress, and a reduction in sick leaves. This will benefit the company financially in a long-term period.

How to Boost Employee Morale?

Now that we’ve known the benefits of a strong team or employee morale let’s look at various workplace morale tips that we can implement to improve the same.

1. Hiring Right

Everything starts with the basics. Employees build the foundation of a company, so your focus should be on hiring the right people. Being clear about your company’s goals and expectations from the employees is a great way to set the tone from the beginning.

The best way to know that you are on the right path is by using the correct applicant tracking system. A proper ATS simplifies selecting the right candidates for the hiring managers and recruiters.

2. Encourage Communication

There is nothing that good communication cannot solve. It might happen that even after your immense efforts, you fail to boost employee morale. In this situation, communication helps.

There might be a silly little reason hiding behind your employee’s hesitation, or maybe it is something personal. Telling them your side will encourage them to come up with their side of problems.

Holding regular meetings is a great way to curb the communication gap. Employee review twice a year can also be beneficial.

3. Promote Work-Life Balance

After the onset of this pandemic, companies have welcomed the approach of creating a good work-life balance for their employees. A perfectly balanced work life along with your employee’s personal life is definitely going to benefit your organization with increased productivity, reduction in absenteeism, improvement in their health, and an increase in retention rate.

Let your team know it’s ok to take breaks or pause notifications on their email app, phone and desktop. Encourage time off and remind them to celebrate personal milestones (like birthdays) as well as their career milestones (like their work anniversary).

Promoting work-life balance is the key to an effective employee morale booster. Your organization will see a visible peak in efficiency provided by your employees and an increase in their determination to work hard.

4. Building Trust

Transparency is the key to building trust between employees and the employer. A study shows that almost 80% of employees want to know insights into the decision-making process in the company they work for.

Being completely open about your organization with your team is the best way to build trust. Communicating with them also plays a major role.

5. Recognize Employees

Humans work on the principle of reward and recognition. Everyone expects some kind of recognition when they provide you with their best work. Recognizing your employee’s efforts and the hard work they put themselves through is a great way to encourage employee morale.

Glassdoor’s Employee Appreciation Survey shows that almost 81% of employees say they are more likely to work harder in a company where their boss appreciates them. According to a study by Psychology Today, 83% of the survey results said recognition for their contributions was more gratifying than any rewards or gifts.

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6. Ask for Feedback

Asking your employees for effective feedback makes them feel recognized and gives them a sense of validation. Feedbacks help the employers as they would get some knowledge of what their employees want.

The feedback culture provides transparency and promotes healthy growth. This encourages the employees and results in improved performance.

7. Offer Sabbaticals

Sabbaticals are the secret ingredient to sprinkle when you want to give an effective morale booster. Big-shot companies like Intel and Adobe offer sabbaticals to their employees, and they have seen a significant positive change at their workplace.

This increases the engagement rate and provides an employee the time to rest and grow. Giving time-off to your employees based on the valuable time they provided to you will surely encourage them to work better.

8. Team Building Activities

The more collaboration happens, the better understanding develops between your team members. Team-building activities encourage problem-solving skills, creativity, efforts, and the need to communicate.

Not sure what activities to include? Here is a quick guide to what kind of fun team-building activities for your employees can prove to be a good morale booster.

9. Offer Growth

Offering growth for your employees can give them a sense of purpose. It may not be a bonus or promotion. It can simply be a conference they can attend that might help them improve their skills.

Career development programs have helped achieve company growth at an incredible rate. The more knowledge an employee has, the growth they can bring in can be better as well.

10. Appoint Skill-based Work

Experience cannot speak for a person’s skill-sets. While hiring, managers and recruiters should keep in mind the skills the candidate possesses. Hiring can be tough and straining, but hiring the best person for the role is important.

Hiring employees based on their skills will benefit both – the company and the employee.

11. Work Flexibility

Rigid work norms like working proper 9-5 have been replaced. Millennials now prefer working in companies that provide a flexible work culture. A significant increase in productivity is seen.

Letting your employees work at their flexibility acts as a great team morale booster.

12. Work Anniversaries and Paid Birthday Leave

Celebrating milestones is great for developing good relationships between the employer and employees. Your employees will feel included when you take the efforts to remember their work anniversaries.

Nobody wants to swim in a pile of stress on their birthday. Encouraging paid birthday leaves will help build a bond of understanding between you and your employees.

13. Express Gratitude

Showing your gratitude towards someone is the best way to encourage them. Gratitude improves a person’s mental and physical health, improves their sleep, and cheers their mood. Cultivating the habit of being thankful among your team is a great morale booster.

14. Employee Incentives/Perks

This might not provide you with a permanent solution, but it works when your team is running on low morale. Giving them free access to any skill-improving classes, or providing them access to courses that might help in their growth, is a great way to boost their morale.

15. Encourage Breaks

Frequent genuine breaks can help a person think more creatively and nurture productivity. It allows them to open more doors of possibilities and helps them think innovatively. The more a person works, the more they have an urge to go out. Change of environment helps in boosting creativity.

16. Promote Employee Diversity

Diversity opens doors for employees to think creatively and with a different perspective through different people. A mixture of different thoughts and ideas is formed. Maintaining and promoting diversity leads to different opportunities and growth.

People with diverse backgrounds are more likely to share skills and knowledge that will differ from each other.

17. Position’s Purpose

Without a purpose, employees feel directionless. They are demotivated when they do not know what their position serves. As recruiters, you should be crystal clear with your employees about their roles, responsibilities, and what you expect of them.

This gives a sense of knowledge of where they should head and motivates them to strive for better.

18. Mentorship, Career Path, and Personality Development

Offering your employees proper mentorship and the guidance they need will only enhance their quality of work. This will increase their productivity and motivation to perform better.

Providing them a clear career path assures them how they should progress in the organization. When they are aware of their career path and provided with proper mentorship, they are more likely to develop their personality in the right direction.

19. Build a Family

Encouraging your employees to communicate with each other and collaborate effectively builds a strong bond between them. This encourages growth, and they can handle criticism positively without feeling offended.

Frequent get-togethers and team meetings can help them know each other better. They can exchange ideas and grow together.

20. Get Rid of Negativities / Bullies

Bullies are only going to hinder everyone’s growth and impact people’s happiness and their mental health. No one enjoys getting bullied. Bullies impact a company’s image negatively and harm employee morale.

Ensure that all of your employees are aware of your zero-tolerance policy. Make it your priority to listen to your employees and their complaints.

21. Have Fun

Being serious about your work should be the primary motive, but do not forget to have fun during this process. Being serious every time won’t help anyone. Bringing your authentic self at work and showing your employees that you are a normal human just like them helps you become more relatable.

Remember, you are a leader, but you should also let your employees know they can communicate with you easily.

Bottom Line

Boosting employee morale can go a long way. Employees are the foundational support your organization gets, and keeping this support intact should be one of your goals. It’s a wiser investment to show your employees you care about their happiness and implement morale-friendly policies.

Improving employee morale is more than just giving them monetary benefits. It is about creating an environment where they feel included and valued for the hard work they give out to your organization.

Kelly Barcelos

Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager specializing in HR and is responsible for leading Jobsoid’s content and social media team. When Kelly is not building campaigns, she is busy creating content and preparing PR topics. She started with Jobsoid as a social media strategist and eventually took over the entire digital marketing team with her innovative approach and technical expertise.

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