Did you know that according to Celonis, 81% of businesses are struggling with low employee morale?
While the increase in remote working provides many benefits, it can have a few flaws, including employees feeling as though they lack a sense of belonging. It can be much easier to build relationships in person, making hybrid working a good balance between work-life balance and building relationships.
As a result of a decreased sense of belonging, many businesses are seeing low morale in the workplace.
What is morale in the workplace?
Morale describes how an employee feels about where they work. For example, if there is high morale, staff are usually motivated and productive, whereas low morale may lead to high staff turnover and poor work quality.
Signs of low morale in the workplace
There are a few things that signal low morale within your company, such as:
- Reduced productivity and performance - This can appear through staff missing deadlines, a decline in work quality, a decrease in initiative, and motivation.
- Absenteeism - This is where employees have taken more sick leave or time off than usual.
- Presenteeism - This is where staff turn up to work but aren’t necessarily engaged.
- High staff turnover - This occurs when a number of people leave their jobs at a similar time.
- Negative outlooks - Staff may complain more or take a less positive approach to situations and tasks at work.
Ways to boost morale in the workplace
If your business is showing signs of low morale, it’s important that you find ways to increase this effectively. Here are a few ideas for boosting morale in the workplace:
Ensure staff have a good work-life balance
Promoting a good work-life balance for your employees will help boost morale, as they’ll be investing more time in their personal lives and taking the time to explore things that make them happy outside of work. Whether this is joining a new club, exercising more, or simply having more time to rest in the evening, this is crucial for staff to have the ability to come to work with a positive and productive attitude.
While remote working has seen an increase in productivity for many people, 31% of people report working more hours than those in the office. If you’re a company that offers remote or hybrid working, it’s important that you find ways to actively encourage switching off and working contracted hours.
You can promote a healthy work-life balance through:
- Offering paid time off - This encourages staff to utilise their holiday allowance.
- Encouraging regular breaks - This improves focus and prevents burnout.
- Offering mental health support - This could be through offering access to counsellors or wellbeing programmes.
- Offering flexible working hours - You can still allocate core working hours, but you could allow people to start work between 8 and 10 and finish between 4 and 6. This allows them to work around personal commitments, such as dropping the children off at school.
Encourage trust and be transparent
Without trust, employee morale can only be so high. Companies should be transparent about business decisions and communicate openly and honestly.
To become more transparent, companies should:
- Provide regular company wide updates - This should include updating on milestones, company news and any key projects.
- Welcome feedback - Allowing staff to provide feedback, helps you improve your company and makes staff feel valued.
- Be honest - When sharing news, it’s important to be honest and direct. News should still be delivered empathetically, but you should avoid making things sound better than they are.
Acknowledge hard work
By showing appreciation for those working hard, staff will feel valued, and employee morale will increase. You can do this by nominating an employee of the month or doing quarterly awards.
88% of British employees have reported that they work harder when they feel appreciated. This highlights that if you’re not doing so already, you should start showing appreciation for your employees.
Involve staff in decision making processes
When employees are given the opportunity to contribute ideas and help make decisions it can give them a sense of belonging and fulfilment that motivates them to do a good job. This ultimately contributes toward enhanced morale.
Invest in benefits
Investing in benefits and perks that staff will actually use increases morale significantly as it improves their life outside of work. In fact, 53% of people say that their perks give them a better quality of life and 79% of people say that they would prefer to have new, meaningful perks rather than a pay rise.
Benefits you could offer include:
- Flexible working hours.
- Hybrid working.
- Mental health support.
- Private health care.
- Above average paid holiday.
Ready to talk about how to boost your team’s wellbeing and support them to be their best, most productive, happiest version of themselves? Speak with CiC today
