Do you notice a decrease in energy and excitement among your team while working? Are your team members lacking productivity? Low team morale is the reason for all of the above signs.
And Low Team morale comes with the warning sign of decreasing job satisfaction. That in turn sums up to not retaining the talented employees in the organisation, lacking productivity, decrease in trust among teammates.
But no matter what the cause, low morale requires a proactive response from you, as a manager. And after all the chaos during this crisis, employees need to be taken care of by their leaders to bring the good old vibes to the workspace again.
As a manager, HR or team leader, you can foster an environment that’s more productive and rewarding for your own team.
Every week is a new start in the work culture. But Mondays can be tough. Even when you love your job, the weekends never quite seem long enough. That’s why it’s important to offset the occasional Monday blues. So beginning your Monday with a coffee together with your team is the best way to enable your employees to discuss the goals for the week, and what are they excited about, what did they learn last week, and what are learnings they are planning ahead in this upcoming week. This is a great way to boost team morale and helps in keeping every teammate accountable for the growth of the organisation.
Wellness includes the all-round well being of your employee. Making your employees psychologically safe and confident by helping them learn new skills, and helping them maintain work-life balance to decrease burnouts.
Employees will feel far more likely to remain loyal to the company when they have a good and healthy work environment which in turn leads to higher employee morale.
Don’t forget that, your employees don’t just exist in a professional capacity to serve your organization. For them to evolve both personally and professionally, there should be all-round development. Help your people lead more fulfilling lives by encouraging them to develop skills, empathy, emotional intelligence, and communication. This will also prepare them for future leadership roles.
Say it with your team: “Let’s Get Weird together.” The idea is to make things that are more fun by doing something out of the ordinary. Do something that is authentic to your team and makes everyone in your team feel more comfortable with each other. But make sure this shouldn’t go off-limits.
This lets your people to
Scientific research points to numerous benefits of gratitude. Studies show that gratitude improves physical and psychological health, improves sleep, and lifts mood. But the challenge for most of the companies is, how do you integrate gratitude into our work culture?
Friday afternoon or Monday morning, you have set up a fun activity along with a gratitude session. For example, each employee calls out a colleague to name one thing that they are grateful for. It allows them to reflect on the week’s accomplishments and gets the weekend started on a positive note.
It’s completely normal for your team members to experience moments of low team morale. But instead of waiting for these periods to naturally pass, use moments of frustration to seek feedback and look for solutions. Proactively find out from your team members why they’re feeling down and what you could do to better manage them. These conversations can be awkward at first, but they’re also a great way to get honest and helpful feedback.
To Break the ice, you can try out some icebreaker games or conversation starters during the session.
Must read : Virtual team building icebreaker games
Growth is a key factor to drive towards our goals for each of us every day. Listen to them very keenly. Help them grow their skills. Also, discuss and help solve a task that they are struggling on and more importantly create a safe space where they are not ridiculed or embarrassed. Small gestures like these, will make you feel valued and are always noticed. This helps in boosting team morale.
Fun is not just an escape from the work but also a great way to help the team interact, bond, get creative and develop competitive spirits. Activities can go from a simple storytelling session to organising a Virtual Murder Mystery or Jumbo Cricket on the beaches of Goa or super fun-filled activities in a resort with your team.
Be it virtual or offsite, Fun activities should be planned in a way that helps the teams get innovative, develops trust and coordination among teammates. This can make the workplace very interesting and in turn, makes it very exciting to come to work every day.
And more importantly, at this point fun is more than important to bounce back your team with the same energy after all the stress they had gone through in this chaos.
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Employee recognition at work reinforces specific behaviours, practices, or actions that bring about better performance and great benefits to the organisation. Additionally, be sure that you find chances to highlight the individual contributions of your team members in front of the others. Giving recognition facing higher-ups, clients, or at staff meetings can go a very long way to making team members feel valued.
A survey by Office Team states nearly 50 per cent of the workers would leave their jobs if they are not appreciated by their supervisors.
Having said that, it is important to recognize people in the right way--you shouldn't just hand out unnecessary compliments which don't seem real. Take note when someone has enhanced or gone over and beyond, and tell them that you were genuinely impressed with the especially good work they did.
Also, be certain to find chances to emphasize the individual gifts of your team members in front of others.
9. Form communities:
It could be a fitness club, book club, volunteering club for charity. Be it any form of interest but employees sharing interests with each other will always be a great morale booster. This is also a great way to help your team bond and in turn, increase employee engagement. They’re a great way to get out of the office, relieve some stress, or escape from the daily routine to spend some time on your interests.
Give your employees enough room to bring more of their true self to work and look for more and more ways to get to know your teams on a more personal level and help each other bond better in a team.
And the moment you recognize that your employees go from high engaging teams to lacking collaboration and small conversations, it’s time to take a stand on boosting the team morale. The best thing you can do for your company is to act on the problems of your people before low morale hits.
