Improving Morale

Having good employee morale in your business means that your staff are happy to come to work every day and can give you many benefits, including better production, reduced absenteeism and improved teamwork and engagement.

There are many different factors that can contribute to low staff morale within a workplace – job security, limited promotion opportunities, unfair compensation and high employee turnover.

An expensive sign that you have low morale in your work environment is high staff turnover and increased absenteeism – two things that can cost your business a lot of money.

If you are noticing this in your business, here are a few tips to increase morale:

• Good management. Managers can make or break a workplace environment. A good manager makes an effort to understand employee’s abilities and tries to provide challenges to utilise their full capacity. They give praise where praise is due and allow employees the opportunity to grow.
• Make your employees feel special. Celebrate birthdays, weddings, births etc. with a cake or card. Find a reason to celebrate the little things in your workplace. It helps to make staff feel at home and comfortable in their place of work and fosters a friendly team environment.
• Listen to the ideas of your employees. Keep your employees informed and up to date with what is happening with the company and listen to their input. This helps to make employees feel as though they are a part of something bigger.
• Reward good work. Be sure to acknowledge when a job has been done well. People want to feel valued.
• Make the workplace feel comfortable. Nobody wants to be in a completely cold, sterile and uncomfortable environment. Replace the harsh fluorescent lighting if need be and keep the office at a comfortable temperature.
• Encourage regular work breaks. Tell your staff to take a walk around the block or go get a coffee. People are much more productive if they take regular breaks to refresh their minds.
• Have some fun. Engage in some team building exercises. Encourage your staff to get to know one another.  Talk about hobbies or something other than work
• Let your employees vent. Get it out of their systems. Meet with your employees individually or in small groups and allow them to share some of their frustrations and challenges they’re facing on the job. The process can help improve morale almost instantly.
• Promote from within your company.
  When your employees see that there are opportunities to advance their careers within the company it makes them strive to do better. Keep on the lookout for employees with skills that could benefit your business and develop them .A small investment in training can go a long way.

Staff Retention Strategies

If you are not doing all you can to keep your staff happy and engaged, you may be at risk of losing your most productive workers to your competition.

You do not need to spend a lot of money to put a staff retention strategy in place. Here are a few things that can help you keep your staff happy.

• A well-defined career path – Most employees want to progress in their careers and like to know that there are opportunities available within their workplace to do so. Have discussions with your team about their professional goals and aspirations and how they can achieve them within your organisation. Offer mentoring and training programmes.
• Acknowledgement - Make an effort to acknowledge staff achievements and hard work. Most staff are more engaged and have a stronger feeling of satisfaction in their work if they feel that managers appreciate their contribution to the workplace.
• Trust – It can be difficult to be productive when someone is breathing down your neck while you are trying to go about your duties. Most employees like to feel that they can be trusted and relied upon to complete their work efficiently without being micro managed.
• Flexible work environment – Flexible work agreements are one of the most desirable elements of a work environment for staff. Giving your staff the opportunity to attend their children’s school activities or medical emergencies can make a big difference to an employee’s happiness within their job. Helping your staff maintain a healthy work and personal life balance can really increase loyalty to your company.
• Ethics – Most people would prefer to work for a company that they believe is good. It can be beneficial to promote ethics when interacting with customers and employees. Ensure your workplace encourages fairness and diversity.
• Communication – Well defined communication is one of the most important factors of retaining staff. Most staff liked to know what is expected of them and to have clear a clear job description or role within the company. Keep employees up to date when it comes to developments within the organisation. People feel more involved and part of the organisation when they are kept in the loop. Encourage employee feedback and ideas. When staff are involved with projects from the beginning they are more likely to feel connected to the outcome. Make sure to address interpersonal problems among staff members as soon as possible.

By using some of these strategies you can help encourage employee motivation and loyalty and lower the likelihood of losing staff to your competition.

The Importance of Staff Retention

Many companies are now beginning to view employee retention as a critical issue. High Employee turnover increases expenses and can also have negative effects on company morale.

Implementing strategies devised to retain good workers can help counterbalance replacement costs and reduce the indirect costs associated with high staff turnover such as lost clients and loss of morale.

Employee retention has become an important topic for many reasons.

These include:

• Social media networking tools such as LinkedIn make it easy to observe new job opportunities or get poached by another company
• Costs associated with hiring new staff, advertising, interviewing and hiring etc.
• Training new staff
• Loss of productivity. It can take up to 2 years for a new staff member to reach the same productivity levels as existing staff members
• Loss of engagement. Retained employees who see a high turnover often get disheartened and lose engagement

The longer staff stay with an organisation, the more productive they get .They get to know the systems, products and learn how to work together as a team.

Many high performing companies have loyal employees and each company has its own strategies for retaining their employees.

Some of the interesting things to consider:

• Compensation is a factor but does not play as big a role as you would think. Over-compensation will not offset a poor work environment
• Job fit is significantly important. Hiring the right people for the right positions by realistically advertising job positions will save you a lot of trouble in the long run. If you oversell a job you can suffer from high staff turnover. Effective retention strategies often begin during the employee recruitment process. Employees are more inclined to remain with a company that fulfils the promises made when their employment offer was extended. Companies that provide a realistic view of their corporate environment, advancement opportunities and job expectations to new hires can positively influence employee retention
• The work environment and culture matter. Staff want to feel appreciated, comfortable and included in their place of work. Employees that enjoy what they do and the atmosphere in which they work are more likely to remain employed with their company

Implementing an employee retention program is an effective way of making sure key workers remain employed while maintaining job performance and productivity.


In the end the most prosperous organisations are those that respect their employees and invest in building an engaged work place environment.