Poor morale can become a disease in your organization and cause it to be eaten from the inside out. It only takes for one or two employees to get infected for it to start spreading. From then on, it can have a direct effect on your productivity, overhead expenses, accidents, absenteeism rates, and more. This is why the well-being of your employees should be a priority for you, and if it isn’t already, prepare to have difficulties with this current crop of employees coming up. Let’s take a look at how you can boost morale in your organization.
Invest in Your Employees’ Development
One study found that 68% of employees left their position because of a lack of learning and development opportunities. This means that more might have to be done to foster personal and professional development in your organization.
Some organizations will go as far as covering part of their employees’ tuition if they decide to get credentials that would make them an asset to their organization, but you don’t need to go that far. One of the simplest things you could do is provide educational resources your employees can access on their own time. Another option would be to send some of your teams to special conferences and events or have speakers routinely come to motivate employees and teach them new principles.
Give them Consistent Feedback
If you’re only conducting annual performance reviews and both you and your employees see them more as a nuisance than anything, you’ll have to change that immediately. First of all, you need to understand the importance of consistent feedback. Employees increasingly want to be reminded of where they stand with the company and how well they’re performing. So, if you only have evaluations once a year, you should consider having them once per quarter, or even once per month.
You also have to change the views your employees have of evaluation meetings. They should not dread them and you should get them involved in the process as much as possible. Give them lots of time to prepare. You could even ask if there are any points they would like to be addressed during the meeting.
Lastly, you need to have systems in place so you can have efficient evaluations and be able to compile the data you gather from them. Here, we would suggest you give StaffCircle and their performance management platform a look. If you want to know how they can help you make performance evaluations more productive you can learn more here. Their tools will allow you to easily access information on an employee’s performance and see if they are in their development. It will also allow you to track who your top employees are and start looking at who could be promoted for greater roles.
Be Flexible
Work-life balance is becoming increasingly important for employees. One of the ways that you can improve it in your organization is by being more flexible with your schedule. You could also allow employees to move between remote and in-office working if they have requested it and it’s possible.
If you think one or more of your employees are suffering from poor morale, you have to take steps immediately to correct the situation. Ignoring this will only lead to more issues down the line.