Improving employee morale and motivation can seem like a daunting task but with the right mindset, it can be easily achieved.

You may be wondering: why should I put in the time, effort, and money into improving my team’s morale and motivation. 

The answer is simple. A happy and motivated team will be more likely to put forth their best effort to advance the goals of the business! It’s been said time and time again that a team with high morale is more productive, motivated and harder working. 

Create Healthy Relationships with Management

Improving your employees’ morale and motivation starts at the top. For an employee to care about the success of your company, you need to make sure they respect and care about the people leading them. 

This can be achieved by ensuring your management team is supportive, open, and respectful to the employees. Nothing says high turnover rate like bad relationships with management. 

How do you show your employees that management is supportive, open, and respectful? It’s easy enough and we go into that in detail below!

Supportive

Supporting your employees is crucial to ensuring they have a healthy relationship with management. Showing them that you support them can help them be independent and more confident in their work. 

Supporting your employees can look like giving them verbal praise, having an open door policy where they’re welcome to bring their concerns, and even just listening to them intently.

Open

Managers who are open with their employees tend to have better communication and more trust. Openness doesn’t mean spilling your guts about your personal life with your employees. It means being transparent about the company and its affairs. 

Put this into practice by having reports or meetings talking about the company’s goals, ideas, plans, and wins for your team. Publish your reports or have meetings frequently (monthly, quarterly, etc) so that the company’s goals and employee’s concerns or ideas can stay top of mind.

Respectful

Showing your employees respect is one of the best ways to improve morale. Employees who are respected are more likely to put in the extra effort in their workdays and are more devoted to meeting the company’s goals.

If your management is new to the team, it’s important they understand the skills and duties of each team member. By doing this, management can be sure to utilize each employee’s strengths. 

If management has been around, it’s smart to talk to the team to find out what they think could be improved for a healthier relationship.

Empower Employees

Empowering your employees in doing the best job they can do is a great motivation booster. If you know their strengths you can emphasize them and entrust your employees to do their best work. 

Give your employees room to make mistakes and then forgive them! Making mistakes is a part of life. If you hold your employees to the unrealistic standards of never making a mistake then they’ll walk on eggshells. They won’t take risks that could improve the business. 

Praising your employees’ efforts opens the door for them to do their best work.

Treat Employees Fairly

Many employers think that treating employees fairly means giving people with similar roles the same treatment and compensation. Imagine if employee A goes above and beyond with their work but employee B does the bare minimum. Do you think employee A will be motivated to continue their current output?

Probably not. Over time Employee A will likely grow resentment and no longer put in the same effort they used to. 

To avoid losing a hardworking employee, make sure you’ve implemented a benefit and compensation system that fairly rewards employees for their hard work. This can be implemented by having annual reviews with a chance for a raise or bonus. 

Prioritize Team Building Activities

Team building activities help you learn the strengths of each employee. They can also teach your team learn how to work more effectively together. Team building exercises should be fun and not feel like an extension of work. Make sure you pick activities that will have your employees working together while having fun. 

Put thought into the team building activities you do. Forcing employees to participate in an activity they find mundane would be a setback to improving their morale. 

How to Further Motivate Employees

Motivation and morale go hand in hand. When you improve an employee’s motivation, you can improve their morale. Some simple ways to motivate your employees is to offer them a reason to stick around and work hard. You can do this by offering above-average compensation and worthwhile fringe benefits.

Offer Above Industry Average Compensation

Money is a motivator for everyone involved in your business. Just like you want to make a profit and run a successful business, your employees want to be adequately compensated. 

Offering below-average compensation won’t attract talented employees and will leave your current employees looking for new work, especially if the business doesn’t do much else to improve employee morale. 

Do your research to find out what the average compensation would be and, if possible, try to offer above average. If above average is not possible, make sure to at least offer average but not below!

Fringe Benefits

Fringe benefits are benefits offered to employees in addition to their compensation. There are benefits required by law like health insurance, workers compensation, and medical leave. Then, there are non-required benefits like free meals, bonuses, paid time off, stock options, and assistance programs (adoption, education, dependent care, etc). The latter are not required but can be an added perk to attract and keep hard-working, talented workers.

When deciding what kind of benefits to offer your employees, offer some that find a balance between affordability and coverage.

Whether you’re a small business with a limited budget or a long-established business with a larger budget, you can still attract and keep good employees with benefits like awards or bonuses, free meals, paid holidays or paid time off, and a number of other morale-boosting programs. 

Summary

Improving employee morale and motivation is not rocket science and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Find what works best for your business. Keep an open mind and don’t be afraid of change!

If you’re struggling with finding where to start, then invest in a Corporate Chaplain for your team! Our Chaplains are a great resource for gauging employee happiness and gaining the trust needed to find out how to motivate your employees! 

While conversations your employees have with Chaplains are confidential, our Chaplains can help lead you down the path to increasing employee morale!