Improve Team Morale With These 5 Easy Methods

Team morale is a massively important element of motivation and is also a key driver of productivity. If you can manage the morale of your team effectively, you can help them produce results in a way that will be as fulfilling for them as it is for you. Different team members with different personalities in different roles will respond to some morale-boosting tips better than others, so please don’t use this guide as a checklist. Be selective, and tailor your strategy to which you think your subordinate or team members would love.

1. Keep employees informed to tackle ‘them and us’ attitude

The retail industry (among many others) suffer from a ‘them and us’ culture, where employees increasingly see management as standing against them. This culture explains the high absenteeism, shocking employee turnover and extreme demoralisation that some retail giants (See: Walmart) suffer from. A communication defficiency between the organisational layers is the main cause of this problem. Elect to be up-front with employees, discussing problems and storms on the horizon as they’re discovered, and not after decisions have been made.

2. Explain the value and benefit to the business they’re creating

A workers morale is derived from the value they believe they’re creating. In this way, a director of a multinational corporation will have a serious morale surplus! However, a cashier at a fast food chain may not feel as well-endowed. Naturally, these grass-root positions in organisations still create plenty of value for the company though, and it pays to remind their occupants of this fact. A manager could, for example  let a cashier see how many sales they’ve put through the till that week. It will likely be an impressive figure reaching into four digits for a full-time employee, and may let them impress themselves!

3. Deliver proper training

When your employees are being trained, are they simply thrown in front of a TV and told to sit through a dull and dated video? Or do they get to be coached one-on-one by a consultant, and put through a personalised and well-tailored training programme? A thorough and professional training scheme will fill employees with a sense of empowerment and self-respect. The thought that a company is investing time and expenses into developing their skills will remarkably improve their morale. For existing employees, consider a 2-day training excursion to refresh competencies and update their knowledge with recent market/company changes.

Training schemes are often out of the control of operational manager, and are ‘slotted into’ the induction programme by senior HR managers. However, if you’re in a small company, you may have sizeable influence over the structure of these training programmes. When it comes to budgets and spending, hotel & travel costs will quickly become astronomical if you choose a distant venue. My advice is to hire a local venue that will take employees out of their workplace, but will not require overnight accomodation. This is the key to receive value for money on training programmes, and will allow you to spend more on top quality talent to train your staff!

4. Consider worker’s outside lives by being flexible

Employees flex their lifestyles to fit their jobs with mixed success. Some people, especially young, single professionals manage to get by fine. However those with many responsibilities, including looking after family simply loose a grip on a sensible balance between fun & meaningful activities, and their career. Employ these ‘common sense’ policies into effect today, to create a positive change:

• Allow reasonable personal calls to be made during working hours.
• Use your discretion in allowing employees to leave earlier or arrive later than normal, with the understanding that the hours will be made up later.
• Put money torwards a medical treatment for a parent’s sick child.

5. Treats and team building exercises

I’d describe treats and team building days as ‘expensive and reliable’. Whether you see them as reliable or not, will depend on what you expect to get from them. If you expect a white-water-rafting day to cohesively give your organisation a firm sense of direction, then you probably need to take your head out of the glossy brochure. If however, you would like to encourage positive behaviour you’ve seen recently, and allow a disjointed, new team a little room to gel as a productive unit, then you could be making a wise investment.

6. Suggestion schemes (for large companies with many employees per manager/shop)

The notion that suggestion boxes are somewhat impersonal is a catastrophic understatement. Suggestion boxes are completely impersonal, and don’t directly help the relationship between management and employees. The cloak of anonymity can encourage people to be reckless, hurtful and careless with what they say.

Question: Why did these old-fashioned boxes make it on my list?

Answer: Because they actually work.

Indeed, despite what I’ve said; suggestion boxes do their job rather well. They’re not there to let employees vent anger, or for managers to gleefully ignore. They’re there to take a poll of employee sentiment, feelings, and pick up some of their ideas. I want you to think about the revolutionary (pun intended) element of the 360 feedback exercise. The key element is that you also get feedback from those beneath you, and a suggestion box is a simple way to do this that has been around a long time before such buzz words were ever printed. You need to be disciplined to encourage the use of a suggestion box. You must not let positive comments fill your ego, nor let the angry or hateful words trash your whole strategy. Gather plenty of responses about the exact topic in question, (be sure to ask for constructive ideas alongside any comments) and sit down in a professional fashion and see what you can incorporate into the working environment.

Expert™ Tip: Don’t look up for support

The green flag from a board of directors to go crazy with employee entertainment and training budgets is an recurring fantasy, but don’t hope for it. Don’t resent those ‘fat cats’ for not even supporting a practical, cheap and (in your opinion) worthwhile training project. Instead, become a manager that others will respect. In the face of an old fashioned and top-heavy corporate culture, make your own success in building morale.

You don’t need permission from your boss to tell Jessica how well hard you know she worked last saturday. You don’t need a dual-sign off on a anniversary card to give to an intern graduate you recruited precisely 1 year ago. Morale comes from the heart, and no board member, no chairman and certainly no accountant can stop you in leading your team to new highs of morale.

To Your Success in Achieving Higher Morale!

Simon Oates ~ Leadership Expert

How To Build a Powerful Team

Welcome to the second article in a teamwork series at Leadership-Expert.co.uk. Within this series, we aim to bring you up-to-date theory on the fundementals and advanced techniques relating to teamwork in the modern organisation.

2. How Can I Build a Powerful Team?

Having good team players is key to great teams. No matter what other fancy stuff we do in the name of team building, if your team members are not good team players, managing the team will be quite a struggle.

How can good team players be developed?

Team players are usually the people that are known for sharing and hard work. This alone will not be sufficient as people also want to see their career progress and be recognized.

Then how do you focus people towards the team goals?

Being a team player often involves doing the right thing by not always having your self benefit in mind. Again, in this age of fast forward on careers and achievement, I cannot see how most people will accept this line. The question of “what is in it for me?” must be answered.

Team goals and objectives must be set. There is no compromise for this because there is no need for the team if not for the project. Now, for the team members. They must have their personal development goals also set. In some organizations, employee development plan is part of the people development process. In fact, people placement into projects are very much influenced by the employee development plans. If this has already happened and the team members are in line for career progress through this team assignment, then half the battle is won.

If this is not how they were assigned, then the project manager or the team leader can discuss with the team members on what are their development and career progression goals. Many a time, it is possible that by contributing to the project success, the team members would also make progress. The fact that you even bothered to find out what are their personal development goals, you would already have created a positive impression with the team members. Just this alone could make a difference in your team building efforts.

There will be times when the project goals and the team members’ plans are not in a similar direction. First thing you must do is to decide whether skill-wise this person fits into the team requirements. If not, do yourself and the team a favor and get a replacement for this person. You might also be doing this person a favor.

However, if it is not a skill mismatch, then understand this person’s aspirations and see if it is possible to assign some activities that will achieve these. Again, it will be a win-win-win-win situation for you, the team, the team members and especially the project which after all is what it is all about. Just caring enough for the individual will make the person contribute more to the project.

If despite all this, the team members still think that this project or team is not where they want to be in, then there is one other suggestion. It is not always that we can choose exactly what we want to do. But then, it is not always that we know what are the possibilities in our lives. Maybe, this is the opportunity that will bring something different that could lead to new possibilities. Suggest that they look for new skills and experiences that will become part of their resume for the next job.

Remind them of Napoleon Hill’s ” Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”

This is not hype! How can it be hype if Napoleon Hill’s books are as popular now as they were years ago? But if the project or team leader thinks it is hype, then this is a difficult step for the leader.

As someone said ” I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care”. I think one of the secrets in team building is caring not only for the project but also for each of the team members.

This is an article from guest author from Regina Maniam

The Great Importance Of Teamwork In Organisations

Welcome to the first article in a teamwork series at Leadership-Expert.co.uk. Within this series, we aim to bring you up-to-date theory on the fundementals and advanced techniques relating to teamwork in the modern organisation.

1. Why Is Teamwork Important?

We do not operate independently in the workplace. We need to socialize and work as a combined entity in the workplace. We require inputs and feedbacks from co-workers. We depend on each other’s expertise to complete tasks. We form teams to get assignments going. Teamwork is essential and everywhere. Teamwork allows us to synergise. That is to create output far greater than the sum of all. There is a common saying about synergy, 1 + 1 = 3 (instead of the mathematical 2). Teamwork is beneficial for everyone as it compliments each other’s weaknesses or leverage on each other’s strengths. You may argue that you can do it on your own. But wait, if you can focus on doing something else that you are more familiar and capable of, and allow another person take charge of what you are doing that is of a common objective, don’t you think you can achieve your objective at a faster pace?

Teamwork compliments our individual weakness. All good leaders know the limits of our abilities and we want to expand our abilities. The simple solution: we tap on other’s expertise. Tap meaning leveraging if were to put it in a more decent tone. And leveraging each other’s expertise is teamwork. Given a task that you find you are unable to deliver, you gather co-workers to complement your weakness with their strengths. But before you can even gather the right co-workers, you must know who complements you. And this knowledge is within your awareness of teamwork. With a person that complements your weakness with his strength, you achieve productivity by creating a well-balanced team.

Teamwork requires respect and compromise of the team members. Let’s admit it, neither you and I are perfect. Nobody is. And because we are imperfect, we depend on each other. To have teamwork, the team members must be willing to accept the differences. Differences like working style, habits and mental model. For example, your team member may be meticulous in handling a report and takes a long time to proof read it before the managers review. On the other hand, you may feel that the report is sufficient and ready for sending on right now. This is a misalignment of working styles. You want it to be delivered swiftly to management while they want to be thorough and ensure that no errors are made. These types of differences cannot be totally reconciled and a compromise must be made. You simply need to respect their working habits. Looking at the big picture; the time pressure you bring into the equation will aid in swift task completion, and will speed up their work, but having your collegues diligence in the mix also means that the report produced will be of higher quality. By having contrasting approaches, as a team you have created work with superior speed and quality than either of you would have produced on your own.  In this way, diverse team members will always leave their own positive mark on an element of the group work.

There are two types of teamwork: power-packed team and balanced team. The power-packed team may consist of team members that possess abilities of the same skill set. It can be described like doubled loaded cannon with enhanced rapid fire. Scientists and engineers are good examples of power-packed teams. The disadvantage of this team is that they are a grouping of the same type of people which may suffer from groupthink, and will not reduce the risk of fundemental mistakes being produced by the team. The balanced team as the name suggest is a combination of team members that complement each other. The benefit of balanced teams is that they can leverage  one another’s abilities.

Teamwork is everywhere and essential in productivity. An individual may achieve a distance, but with a team effort, the individual can achieve even further distance. Teamwork is about leveraging on each other’s best. Before you can leverage another person, you need to respect and compromise the differences that you and he may have. With understanding of your team members, we are certain that you can deliver higher productivity than what you can expect of yourself.

Article by guest author Lostincubes.