As we begin our journey into 2019, many employees across the U.S. are streaming back into the office, slightly agitated and groggy from their time-off spent with family and friends during the holidays. Not many people have the ability to shift from the fantasy of holiday merriment back to the real world of executing Q1 goals for their job in a smooth manner. So, to help combat holiday hangover, leaders of businesses can try out these 6 tips for boosting morale in the workplace.
Boosting morale in the workplace
By following these ideas, you can help improve employee engagement, communication, employee retention and more.
1. Give employees a “catch up day”.
Simply, there is no worse feeling than the dread you get on the last day of your long vacation, knowing that you have to go back to reality and work the next day. It’s inevitable, but people have bills to pay, right?
Well, to help offset those negative feelings, managers should look into allowing their employees to work remote their first day or two “back at the office” to catch up on emails and other administrative tasks. This day(s) could be marked as “do not disturb” for them as this will help them maneuver back into the habit of working daily.
After a day or two of catching up, they can come back into the office with a little less dread, because they were allowed to work from home. It will help the week feel shorter and allow them to get their “work legs” back. These little feelings can definitely help increase employee motivation around the office.
2. Spice up the way you celebrate employee accomplishments
There are many different ways leadership can go about celebrating employee wins and accomplishments. As positive confirmation from leadership to employees is crucial for overall employee morale, it would be highly noticed and appreciated if management was able to creatively award employee accomplishments when they are called for.
For example, management can create a points system on assignments completed, goals hit, employee teamwork and much more. With that implemented, employees can save up the points to use to purchase prizes like gift cards, movie tickets, electronics and more.
Or, managers can simply write up a thank you card for the hard work that their employee(s) had put into in getting a crucial task done. There isn’t really a wrong way to show appreciation to your subordinates besides not doing so at all.
3. Management should show off their talented subordinates to leadership/c-suite executives
Management can help flip the moods of their employees by simply communicating accomplishments, wins, goals hit and more to their C-suite managers themselves.
After all, it would be impossible for managers to have any success without the buy-in and hard work of the employees they oversee. So, to help boost employee morale, good managers should have direct conversations with C-suite about employee accomplishments, phone calls, in team meetings, CC’d on emails and much more.
For example, if James in marketing created a piece of content for the website that drew in 20 percent more leads down the sales funnel from the month before; his manager may send an email to his boss that says, “James’ new content piece on [insert subject] helped us qualify 20 percent more leads than the month before.”
When employees feel appreciated, they are more successful in their jobs.
4. Provide ongoing training to employees
For 2019, continuing education should always be a priority for management to communicate with their employees. Continuing education provides many benefits for employees and the company as a whole. For employees, they add new skills to their toolkit while also giving them the feeling of progressing further towards their career goals. For employers, highly-skilled employees are great to have because they make the company better overall by using the new skills acquired to improve processes, bolster operations, create new campaigns and much more.
Managers should fight for education and training budgets so they can send their employees to training, conferences, attend online classes and more.
5. Give employees a roadmap of what it would look like to climb the ladder
The goal for most working people is not to stay in the same position year-after-year doing the same tasks, but to work for the opportunity at growth, security and prosperity. Managers can help stymie poor employee morale by providing them the blueprint in what it takes to climb the company ladder, or if your organization is too small for such ideas, managers should promise to help their employees attain new positions when they clearly have outgrown their current role.
Managers should be transparent by providing clear guidelines for employees of what’s expected to progress in their position, as well as how they can get promotions.
6. Evaluate departmental meetings and toss out the unnecessary ones
There is nothing more frustrating than being required to attend meetings you really have no need to be in whatsoever. Or, being in meetings that could have ended 30 minutes ago, but a few people are deciding to prolong it with conversation unrelated to the task at hand.
These types of meetings are draining for those who know they don’t need to be a part of them because it’s taking away time in their day they could be using to get their own tasks done, or helping with other organizational operations.
This may be trickier for managers to handle, especially since their employees need to be transparent themselves about how they are feeling about the meetings they are attending. However, when it’s apparent that meetings are simply not worth the time, managers should be proactive in removing them entirely, see where combining meetings may be more efficient, or consider a side conversation if it would be easier.
Successful employers understand that boosting employee morale is crucial in the success of their organization. They can take these ideas to help their employees get over the holiday lull and to hit 2019 strong! For employers interested in improving employee morale year-after-year, they should be focusing on a strong benefits program to attain and retain top talent.
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