IMPROVING TEAM MORALE

Employee morale is the morale of employee in a work environment. It is proven to have a direct effect on productivity. It also plays a vital role in profitability, customer satisfaction and workers’ health.  Low morale may lead to reduced concentration, which in turn can cause mistakes, poor customer and missed deadlines. It also can contribute to a high turn-over rate and absenteeism.
Failing to address this low team morale leads to decreased productivity, increased rates of absenteeism and associated costs, increased conflicts in the work environment, increased customer or consumer complaints, and increased employee turnover rates and costs associated with selection and training replacement staff.
When team morale suffers, it is important that you take steps to rebuild your team’s mood quickly. Employees tend to lack the motivation to perform their jobs when morale is low. Management and employees can help increase morale in the workplace by the following means;

• Communicate and listen to team members: Good communication between the team is crucial for good morale. Team members need to feel their opinions are valued and that management is listening to what they have to say. Frequent and honest communication provides an opportunity to share information and develop trust.

• Establish clear and specific performance goals for the team and each team member. Meet with the team on a regular basis to develop and periodically review project objectives and confirm accountability for deliverables. Clear expectations are critical to good team morale. Team members need to know what is expected of them. They also have the responsibility to make sure that they take the initiative to clarify what is expected of them if they are not sure.

• Encourage team members to be innovative and to take calculated risks: Allow team members to be creative and experiment with new ideas. Address the impact of risk-taking and the potential for failure. While understanding that failure and mistakes will happen, it is important to differentiate between mistakes that are catastrophic and those that can be tolerated. It is one thing to talk about risk-taking, it is something else to actually encourage and reward risk-taking.

• Seek best practices from the best people by focusing on their strengths: The organization should not spend a lot of time and money trying to “fix” skills that are weak or trying to make sure that those who lack specific skills can do something even if that “something” is outside the team member’s domain of expertise or interest.

• Find ways to instil a sense of team spirit – Group identity is crucial to creating a feeling of belonging and membership. The team should develop a way to create a team identity through a shared symbol, team logo, motto, and so forth.