If the C suite is the driver of an organization, and management the motor, then employees are like the wheels. You can have the best driver in the world and the most powerful engine, but if one or two of your tires are flat, or there’s even a slight misalignment, then the whole organization suffers.
The problem is knowing how to identify morale issues and finding concrete and actionable ways to correct the situation. Thankfully, with the right commitment, knowledge, and tools, you can create a work environment where your employees will thrive and give their all. Here are a few ways that you can improve morale and performance in your organization.
Know the Metrics
You can’t correct what you can’t measure, so you have to make sure that you have clear systems in place to track performance, no matter how small or big your organization is. This is where performance management tools come in.
Tools for performance management allow management to see which employees have outperformed their functions, broke even, or underperformed. But more importantly, they also allow you to track trends across the board. You could also see dips in performance in certain departments or certain teams. This could point to some underlying issues, like poor management, for instance.
Make them Feel Part of the Whole
Creating a sense of community among your employees is something that can never be understated. When members really feel as if they’re part of a team, it adds a whole other dimension to their work. On the other end, isolation is a sure-fire recipe for disengagement and unhappiness.
Building a sense of community takes continuous effort and time, and has to go beyond out of work events, though they’re an essential part of it. But encouraging teamwork within your organization will pay dividends. People are naturally more motivated when they work as teams, and it allows them to build bonds and bank on their strengths.
Incentivize Good Performance
Another great way to boost performance is to actually give your employees tangible rewards for good work. These should be based on clear goals, and they should be good enough for our employees to actually work for them.
Making sure that these objectives are clear and clearly measured will ensure that there won’t be cries of favoritism. Another approach you could take is to give team rewards instead of individual ones. This will force whole teams to work towards the same goal and will foster healthy competition between teams. You could pit the evening and day team against each other or the weekend team against the week team. The goals can be anything from attendance records, sales, or even learning and development benchmarks, such as offering a bonus after reading a certain number of industry-related articles or completing courses.
Conclusion
Maintaining good morale is essential if you want to increase retention rates, reduce hiring and onboarding costs, and boost performance. Never neglect the happiness of your employees, especially at a time when the demographics of the workforce are shifting in their favor.
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