Five Suggestions to Avoid Low Employee Morale | Have Any Others?
The following five suggestions to help managers avoid stepping on employee morale are an excerpt from John Schaefer's The Root Causes of Low Employee Morale:
Do you agree with these? I'm sure there are more than five suggestions ... can you add others?
Suggestion #1—Form Relationships Built on Trust
Strong, effective relationships are built on trust. If you don’t have strong, trust-based relationships with your people, everything you do to recognize them will be seen as manipulation. When employees feel that you are using recognition to “get more out of them” rather than to show that you value them personally, they begin to emotionally disengage and morale suffers. It’s not hard to develop trusting relationships with your people, but it does take time, consistency, and integrity.
Suggestion #2—Show Them Respect
The book The One Minute Manager introduces a theory of personal responsibility that allows managers to get maximum results with a minimum of time invested with each staff member. The secret is in showing them respect, defining their expectations, and avoiding micromanaging. Most employees respond well to being given enough rope to hang themselves, as long as their job is well defined and they are allowed to fail periodically without fear of unrealistic retribution. Respected employees are more alert, creative, and productive. When they do make a mistake, they’ll fix it, move on confidently and won’t make that mistake again.
Suggestion #3—Nurture Creativity
Once you’ve built trusting relationships and developed a foundation of respect, employees will automatically respond with more creativity. The best way to nurture and benefit from their new-found creativity is to go by the philosophy that there are no bad ideas, only undeveloped ones. Trusted and respected employees with managers who reinforce the fact that they have some flexibility to try new things will surprise you with the creative ingenuity that they bring to their work. The best part is that you get this for the same price you’re paying unhappy employees who are doing just enough to get by.
Suggestion #4—Build Effective Teams
Team building is a more complex challenge than fostering high morale in individual employees. Here are five problems that many teams develop that keep them from being as effective as they want to be in accomplishing company goals:
• Absence of Trust—due to invulnerability
• Fear of Conflict—artificial harmony
• Lack of Commitment—ambiguity
• Avoidance of Accountability—low standards
• Inattention to Results—caused by individual status and ego issues
In the absence of trust, morale is at its lowest and self protectionism becomes the rule. It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to realize that this will limit productivity and make work a lot less rewarding for both employees and their managers. This “every man for themselves” attitude destroys teams and makes it impossible to optimize goal setting and achieve corporate objectives in a timely manner, if at all.
By learning to communicate more effectively based on honesty, consistency, vulnerability, and respect, your teams will be able to focus unselfishly on common results. This in turn keeps individual egos and agendas in check.
Suggestion #5—Make It Real
One of the first things to stress with your management team is what’s called “Making It Real.” This means being genuine and believable in interacting with their people. Employees tend to fall into some common negative habit patterns that employees experience when they feel underappreciated. When your managers understand how to be more open and vulnerable with their staff, they work towards trust, respect and improved communication.
“Making It Real” is the answer to the question, “What is the root cause of low employee morale?” Maybe it’s because it’s so simple that it is so often missed, but without your people believing you are genuine, honest, and practicing high levels of integrity, any efforts you make to improve morale will be suspect. If you keep this in mind in your dealings with your people, you will be surprised how easy it is to improve morale and you can enjoy the benefits of higher productivity, better retention, lower costs, and an overall happier, more satisfying workplace.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by GovLoop on -
Sounds simple and often you don't have the choice.
But it really is - hire the right people. I think it's really hard to change people once in...more emphasis on making sure hire right people up front. -
-
Permalink Reply by Doris Tirone on -
Steve ~ I liken your comment to putting the hard work in at the front end. Either pay now or you'll pay later. Taking the time to find the people who fit well together is truly worth the effort it takes to make it happen!
-
-
Permalink Reply by Henry Brown on -
Perhaps a renaming of the discussion to 5 steps to improve communications :-) . IMO Communications is the key to either good or bad morale, or even taking it further, communications is the key to productive employees/teams.
@ Steve's comment fits right in if the hiring people have established good communications and base their hiring choice on objective standards then the communications will be off to the best possible start and team building and productivity will be started in the correct direction. IMO it is a whole lot easier to continue good team building than rebuild a team. -
-
Permalink Reply by Mark Hammer on
-
Ask them what they need, or what they need in place to do their job well.
If you look at the burn-out literature, what you tend to see as a concommitant of burnout is the sense that no matter what one does, your efforts simply won't matter or change anything. Clearly people value the sense of personal effectiveness.
Trust is great, but show me you trust me by letting me do my job as well as I am trying to, and I'll trust you back. Give me the resources and channels I need to come home each day with a sense of accomplishment, and I'll come to work the next day believing you respect me. -
-
Permalink Reply by Doris Tirone on
-
Well said, Mark! Knowing you're trusted and you have {or will be provided with} the resources to do your job go a long way toward wanting to work hard for an employer!
-
-
Permalink Reply by Peter Sperry on -
Make it real by focusing on achieving results and make sure the staff know how they fit into the plan.
I've been with two organizations that went under. In both situations the managers tried to maintain moral using every possibly means except the one that would have worked; producing results that customers wanted in the first case and voters in the second. It actually hurt worse to see these jobs end precisely because everyone in both organizations enjoyed working there.
Staff know when an organization is in trouble and most would rather put the effort into salvaging the jobs they have than preparing their resumes for the one they will need to find. Executives should not be afraid to say "look, these are the results we must produce to keep this organization in business. Here is how you fit into the plan and this is the time frame we have before it is too late."
Government organizations have tended to think they are immune from this dynamic but recent events on the local, state and even the federal level are indicating it is time to get real. Employees who are confident their organization is producing solid results that will keep them employed are a whole lot easier to motivate than those who may love their boss but are nevertheless headed for the life rafts. -
-
Permalink Reply by GovLoop on
-
Something else I'd add is set expectations realistically.
Some people imagine this amazing perfect work world but what is realistically doable.
-For example There will never be no turnover and some turnover is good. But want a reasonable amount of turnover.
-At no time will everyone be sooo happy and love job more than everything. But should aim for a high majority of people happy most of time. -
Sponsor Spotlight
Tools & Resources
© 2012 Created by GovLoop.
