How to Boost Employee Morale in 6 Steps

Employee morale directly impacts worker productivity, so you should prioritize it in your small business. The best way to know if morale is low is to review data regularly and then act on it by speaking with your team about their needs, training your managers, encouraging people to take time off, and reviewing your benefits package. If you take those thoughtful steps, then you can make positive changes that ultimately boost your employee morale.

Step 1: Measure Employee Morale

Before you know there’s a problem and before you can take action to boost employee morale, you need to measure it. Here are three key ways to measure employee morale.

Conduct Anonymous Surveys

One of the best ways to get a genuine sense of employee morale is through anonymous surveys. Some employees are understandably suspicious of whether a survey is truly anonymous, so use an established platform to gather these results. Many platforms gather and compile results for you, using aggregate data that shows trends in your company.

Your survey should be short and consist of just a few items, including:

Having workers rate their happiness at work on a scale
Asking employees if their manager supports them in their role

These items specifically can help you understand where your employees’ morale sits.

Surveying workers also gives you data from across the company. While you won’t know which employees answered each question, you will be able to chart this data. Say you asked all 10 staff members to rate their happiness on a scale of one through five—if more than one gave a low rating, you need to take action, as low morale can spread like wildfire.

Analyze Turnover & Absenteeism Patterns

We know that turnover is a telltale sign of low employee morale. Look at your historical turnover data over the last quarter, six months, and year. If you see high turnover rates at any point, you may have a morale problem. The same is true for absenteeism. If you see spikes in employees calling out last minute, it could be caused by reduced employee morale.

Conduct Performance Reviews

Great managers support employees and give them the space required to succeed. While every manager should know what their team is working on and do whatever they can to support them, they shouldn’t micromanage.

Managers should review performance with each individual on their team at least once per year in a formal setting and more frequently in less formal environments. Even for informal discussions, managers should record information discussed and any relevant performance data. This data can be used to spot patterns of poor performance, which can be a clear indicator of falling morale.

Step 2: Communicate Expectations Clearly & Get Employee Feedback

Your employees need to understand what you need from them. That starts by setting clear and realistic expectations for each employee and position. Leave no ambiguity when discussing what’s needed with each worker and department.

The most effective way to communicate transparently is to hold regular check-ins—tell your team what’s coming and what they can do to push an existing project over the finish line. You can use this along with, or in place of, anonymous surveys. The benefit to using both is that you can review the anonymous survey data and then discuss that data with employees.

This is also a great opportunity to speak about their morale and make sure they’re happy and getting the support they need. If it’s clear that one employee or department is struggling, don’t ignore it or try to hide the issue—that’ll only make matters worse.

Discuss their concerns and figure out how to move forward together. You need to show them that you hear them and will act. You can’t possibly implement everything an employee wants, but you can hear their concerns and act on the most important.

Step 3: Provide Growth Opportunities

If employees don’t see change, you’ll lose more ground. Providing growth opportunities is one of the best ways to bring about positive changes, and investing in your team is a great way to show them you hear them and act on their desires. Career development programs help workers improve their skills and make them better prepared for promotions, which increases their morale and loyalty to your company.

Step 4: Train Managers

Your managers must have solid people management skills. Too many lack good people skills or don’t prioritize them when managing a team. Because they work directly with your employees on a microlevel, they may directly affect your company’s morale levels.

Training them on managing people effectively, executing proper communication, and giving recognition and feedback is crucial. Even if they aren’t the cause of low employee morale, it is their job to fix the issue. So, you must train them to spot and deal with faltering morale.

Step 5: Encourage Disconnection From Work

When companies think about ways to increase morale, they often overlook genuine breaks and disconnection. They think that the way to overcome a drop in morale is to dig deeper and focus intensely on work. That can have the opposite effect.

Workers today are pretty terrible at taking even a lunch break, let alone a full vacation. That’s because so many companies offer paid time off (PTO) as a benefit but don’t encourage employees to use it. By reminding employees to disconnect, whether it’s for an afternoon or a week, you can help them get refreshed. You might be surprised by the productivity increase you’ll see.

Step 6: Offer Great Benefits

The most long-term solution for boosting employee morale is providing great employee benefits that support workers. We’re not talking about pizza parties or Zoom happy hours. Those are overplayed, and you can be much more creative.

From high-quality healthcare and retirement plans to PTO and vacation incentives, building an exceptional benefits package will help you attract and retain top talent. While it can be costly, investing in your staff members will boost their morale and productivity, increasing your company’s profitability.

Why High Employee Morale & Engagement Are Important

Here’s the takeaway formula: high employee morale = high worker productivity. When your team’s morale is high, your company productivity has no limits.

Employee morale and employee engagement, the level to which employees are happy with their work and employer, are inextricably linked. Gallup reports that barely one-third of workers are engaged in their work. That low level can lead to toxic workplace behavior and relationships, which further reduce morale in your organization.

Also, while employees enjoy remote work and many companies have found it to increase productivity, it creates collaboration problems. Video calls, chats, and emails grow stale and lack the impromptu collaboration you get being in the same physical space. So, make sure you proactively manage morale and engage remote employees as both are increasingly vital to your company’s success.

Causes of Low Employee Morale

There are countless reasons for low or dropping employee morale. Click through the tabs below for the four most common.

Employees need to understand what their role is and how it fits into the bigger picture of your organization. Too often, however, they are left with insufficient job descriptions and poor management—so they are just figuring it out. That’s not a good way to get support from your team.

If they don’t know what’s expected of them, then you can’t hold them accountable and they won’t have any motivation to get the job done. Communicate with your team clearly and often about what’s expected of them and how you will support them.

High employee turnover is usually a sign of problems in your organization and can exacerbate morale issues. When employees see colleagues leaving in droves, they get concerned about what’s really going on and may become disengaged. There are many causes of turnover, some outside of your control, so taking proactive steps to combat it can help change the trend.

The old cliche is true: Employees rarely leave companies; they leave managers. Effective employee management is crucial to employee morale and retention—and that begins with your managers.

When managers are overbearing, aggressive, unsympathetic, and constantly looking over employees’ shoulders, that sets a bad tone. Managers must understand that their behavior directly affects the team and be able to react to employees who need different management styles.

Employees want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves. They also want opportunities to grow and develop within their company and in their personal lives. If a company is stagnant or doesn’t encourage employees to better themselves, morale often drops.

Without growth and new challenges, workers frequently become bored, disengaged, and unmotivated. You might even lose them, further increasing turnover and decreasing morale for those who remain.

Employee Motivation vs Morale

These are related concepts that help your business achieve high productivity. Motivation is your employees’ drive to get a task, project, or job done; it’s a personal and individual trait that can fluctuate. Meanwhile, morale is the overall satisfaction they have with your organization.

Rarely do you see just one employee with low morale—it’s often an entire company or department. Motivating employees can help one worker out of a slump in the short term, but if you want long-term change, you have to lift morale.

That’s because one of the most common (and worst) ways employers motivate workers is through fear—it can be effective to get something done quickly but is short-lived. Morale provides long-term engagement, where employees take initiative and collaborate to reach common goals.

Motivation can come from external factors like good pay, benefits, and growth but also stems from internal factors—and that’s where it’s linked to morale. Internal motivation happens when an employee is satisfied with their job and company.

Bottom Line

If you notice employee morale has dropped, it probably has been going down for a while, and you need to act immediately. The best course of action is to embrace changes and swiftly take the proactive steps we listed to boost it.