7 Ways To Boost Employee Morale In 2022
Publié le 13 June 2022
Help create a positive and supportive work environment in any type of organization by knowing 7 ways to boost employee morale in 2022.
Look at current workplace trends and you’ll pick up on an interesting shift. The same companies that used to require a full-time staff working eight hours in the office have now slowly shifted to partial or fully remote models. A lot of employees across the world in all types of job roles have gotten comfortable working from home.
Workplace culture has therefore evolved, which means HR departments are on the lookout for ongoing methods on how to boost employee morale. Positive employee morale only means good things for a company, as satisfactory employee experiences signify a healthy workplace culture.
Research revealed that over 90% of employers have planned on creating positive employee morale in 2022. Morale is essentially the general level of satisfaction that employees feel in their respective organization. Good working conditions, quality management, and fair compensation are just some things that go into boosting employee morale.
Employers quickly realize that positive work culture has a direct impact on employee retention, productivity, and loyalty. High morale is one of the most effective ways to enhance the employee experience. When you make a well-intentioned effort to connect and empathize with your employees, it pays off. They feel self-assured, safe about their jobs, and if you’re doing it well, they feel empowered as well. This sense of empowerment will help them perform at their best, and is a key reason why it is important to utilize the 7 ways to boost employee morale in 2022.
The Importance of Boosting Employee Morale
What separates good leaders from great ones, is that the latter want to know how to boost employee morale. They know that positive employee morale will reward them over the long term. They also know that creating a supportive and healthy employee culture will ensure greater job satisfaction and boost the overall performance and reputation of the entire workplace..
Before we get into the details of how to boost employee morale, let’s take a quick look at other reasons positive work culture is important.
Let’s say you’re in retail management and your shift workers have been slacking off. You’ve noticed this behavior but aren’t sure of the cause. The best thing for you to do would be to conduct individual or group check-ins where you ask your employees what’s wrong.
Retail employees are front-facing workers, meaning they interact with customers and can make or break your brand value. Showing them concern, employee recognition, and rewarding their honesty will help them feel valued. They will then work harder to keep the business running well.
Boosting morale is great for reasons other than just qualitative ones. When you crunch the numbers, you realize just how powerful positive employee morale can be for your corporation. Research has found that companies which made the Employee Experience (EX) a key part of their HR strategy are 90% more likely to show a lower annual turnover than their rivals. These are undeniable statistics and living proof that work motivation linked to employee morale is a key driver to improved efficiency, productivity, and loyalty.
High employee morale goes a long way in preventing employee burnout. Burnout can occur in even the most organized corporations. Detailed process maps and meticulous task sheets don’t matter if your employees are demotivated or feeling lackluster. Placing a company-wide focus on employee recognition and empathy can help to stop burnout and overworking.
7 Ways to Boost Employee Morale
With the way the world has changed, employees have also changed what they look for when choosing a company. A few years ago, benefits and perks like gaming rooms, transportation allowances, and happy hours might have been important, but priorities are now different. More employees than ever are looking for corporations that know how to boost employee morale. They want to work with leaders that emphasize employee recognition and workplace motivation.
Let’s take a closer look at 7 ways to boost employee morale in 2022.
1: Be an Empathetic Leader
One of the best ways to connect with employees is to be understanding and empathetic. Leaders must try to place themselves in their employees’ shoes and look at things from their point of view.
Being an empathetic leader isn’t difficult. The one place you can exercise empathy is when you’re giving feedback for a task. Avoid handing out lazy or meaningless feedback because this can make employees feel unheard or misunderstood. They can also end up feeling under-valued.
This is the core issue that arises when you give generic feedback. Feedback should be specific enough that the employee on the receiving end knows exactly what to do with it. It should also empower them to bring about a positive change themselves. Employees who feel like a trusted and valued part of the company will give more and better, because they will start working for the community as a whole.
Let’s look at an example of giving empathetic feedback. Suppose you’ve set out the task of testing metrics in agile. You’re monitoring your team as they go about testing the framework and the product in question. Instead of telling them generic pointers throughout the process, make sure you check in with them and give them detailed objectives and goals.
Once they get back to you with results, go through them and give constructive criticism or praise where necessary. Be careful not to brush employee efforts under the rug at any cost. Empathy is critical for building a positive employee culture.
2: Create Open Communication Channels
Very often employers find there is a disconnect between what they believe an issue to be about, versus what employees are having trouble with. A survey revealed a huge discrepancy between employees’ reasons for leaving their jobs compared to what employers thought they were.
For example, over 70% of employees reported that they would have stayed with the company if they had received substantial or better benefits. Comparatively, only 42% of employers gave benefits as the reason for their high turnover.
A lot of this miscommunication can be avoided if employers conduct special sessions where they let employees air their complaints. Of course, there’s always the danger of opening up the floor to chaos, but controlled and guided feedback sessions can be useful assets for any corporation.
Frequent town hall meetings or focus groups can be good additions to the overall HR QA framework for any company. Ensuring that employees know they have the opportunity to make their voice heard is one of the most effective of the 7 ways to boost employee morale in 2022. At the very least, an open channel of communication will ensure that employers know how to boost employee morale in the organization.
3: Evaluate Your Company as a Business
Think about this: you want to know how to start an online store. You will do relevant research, test your product, and figure out how to market it. However, the most essential part of this process will be identifying your key consumer, i.e., the person who will help your store become a success. You will therefore work to find out their likes/dislikes and try to ensure that your store caters to their needs.
Workplaces are very similar to stores or consumer-led businesses. Think about how your employees are in fact consumers; they are attracted to good workplace morale and discouraged by an unhealthy work culture. Once you think of your company as a business that also serves its employees, you will automatically find small ways to boost employee morale, leading to higher productivity and employee satisfaction overall.
4: Add Flexibility to the Company
As we’ve discussed earlier, a lot of employees now work fully or partially remotely. A survey reported that around 65% of employees are looking for increased flexibility, remote work schedules and off-site workplaces.
Not all employers can afford to offer fully remote work experiences. However, you can easily extend hybrid roles to some if not all of your employees. One of the main concerns that employers have is that remote work can create communication gaps or lead to low morale. This is far from the truth. There are a lot of ways to ensure that you can improve employee appreciation and recognition in remote teams.
The easiest way to do this is using remote workforce management software. Not only will this allow you to access all your resources in one place, but it will keep all the employees on track for their deliverables and tasks.
You can figure out the percentage of time that each employee needs to contribute to a specific task under their role. For example, you can divide up their time by offering 50% on-site and 50% off-site work. Adding flexible options will help boost employee morale in 2022 overall as they won’t feel confined to a single place.
5: Focus on Growth and Evolution
One of the main reasons people want to work at any company is the potential for growth. Motivated and hardworking employees will invariably seek an organization that allows them to polish their skill-set. They want to be challenged and evolve as they spend more time in the company. Plus, offering a growth model will increase employee morale and possibly reduce your turnover.
The best way to offer growth opportunities is to schedule frequent training or refresher sessions. You can get in touch with key opinion leaders in the industry to conduct relevant webinars or workshops that will add important skills to your employees’ skill-sets. This, combined with in-house skill-sharing sessions will ensure employee engagement as well as create positive employee morale as their abilities improve and grow.
In fact, research shows that around 59% of millennial workers want to assess a company’s growth opportunities before they decide to apply for a job there. Making this a key more of the employee experience will help provide a boost in recruitment and retention, helping attract the most qualified job candidates.
6: Encourage Employee-Led Events
More often than not, a lot of employees have some great ideas for workplace initiatives that will boost morale. These could be work wellness classes, yoga retreats, ice-breaker sessions, event ideas, and a lot more. Good leaders should always lend their support to employee-led initiatives since these help employees feel like they belong.
For a real world example, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) started a “Be Well, Work Well” initiative because employees were holding smaller wellness sessions throughout the company. The initiative focuses on the “six dimensions of well-being: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, financial and social,” as they are “proven drivers of performance, fulfillment, and engagement.” This showed employees that PwC cared about their health and concerns, increasing overall workplace morale and motivation.
7: Be Inclusive
Human beings like staying in places where they feel at home and where they feel like they belong. The same principle applies to employees at organizations, because they’re far more likely to stay loyal if they feel a sense of ownership and belonging.
Make sure your employees feel this way by arranging trips or initiatives that enable them to interact together out of the workplace as well. If you’re working remotely, you can create a specific channel on your communication network where employees can discuss things not related to work. If you work on-site, you can arrange events or office socials so people can get together and just hang out. This will allow you to focus on employee engagement and boost workplace morale while improving the personal and professional bonds between coworkers.
Successful employee engagement will boost employee loyalty. They won’t be on the lookout for a newer, better job and will ultimately become more motivated to do the work they already do. Not only that, but you’ll see them display higher levels of job satisfaction because they will feel that the work they do is worth more than just money.
Morale Boosters: Hit or Miss?
Every employer that wants to achieve high employee satisfaction should know how to boost employee morale. This is especially important in 2022 since employees are being scrupulous while picking their workplaces. Companies that can offer employee engagement, recognition, and high morale, will find themselves ahead of their competition.
Everyone wants to work in a place where they feel a sense of kinship and they can be their best selves. Also, since everything has become a brand nowadays, it’s almost too easy to garner a bad reputation if you engage in poor employee practices.
It’s equally important for employees and consumers to think of your brand as credible, trustworthy, and transparent. For the sake of your reputation and your bottom line, it is crucial to utilize the 7 ways to boost employee morale in 2022 and create a healthy workplace in your organization.
