Summary: How employee morale affects your business and what you can do to improve it. The top 3 tips to boost employee morale include; providing recognition, ensuring employees are satisfied, and employee retention.
There are a variety of things that can lower employee morale in a business; from a change over in management to the merging of two cultures. With this in mind, there there are some business tools that can assist in ensuring your employee morale is at an all-time high, one of which is an intranet. An intranet can connect new team members, provide consistent brand identity, keep employees updated on company news and make them feel a part of their company’s success.
To boost employee morale there are 3 main areas to focus on; providing recognition for a job well done, ensuring employees are satisfied with the tools, job, and team, and finally, retaining employees by providing essential online training and keeping them engaged with the company.
Combine the 3 key elements of employee morale; RSR (Recognition, Satisfaction, Retention), and there’s one tool that can bring it together. Your intranet.
1. Employee Recognition
A recent Gallup study found that 78% of employees being recognized are motivated in their job. That means that making room for praise from small daily tasks to large projects is extremely beneficial to employee productivity as well as morale. It’s easy to find yourself going down the rabbit hole of critique rather than praise. This can stem from a company’s constant need to improve year over year. Management is looking for improvement opportunities, which more than likely come out in the form of criticism. An Employee Recognition application on your intranet can allow for an individual, or department, to be recognized for a job well done! Your intranet is a great place to praise as it’s collaborative and available to everyone. This leaves plenty of time in the boardroom to look for opportunities to improve while the employee still feels recognized!
TIP: Sometimes praise isn’t given because they assume someone else already gave it! Don’t leave it in the hands of one person. From helping someone with their deadline to embodying one of the companies core values, open up employee recognition to everyone in the office. Use your intranet as a place for praise!
2. Employee Satisfaction
Okay so, happy workers are 12% more productive than unhappy workers. This is definitely motivation to ensure your employees are satisfied with the tools, job, and team they work with! How can you use your intranet to ensure employees are satisfied? Create a Quick Poll for an upcoming team building idea, launch a Suggestion Box for improvements around the office or share an Online Survey to gather feedback on how their on-boarding/training went.
- Tools: Companies use many different tools to get work done. It’s crucial that an employee doesn’t see these new tools as a roadblock and that proper training is provided. Your intranet is a valuable resource for placing online training materials and even creating a Training Site.
- Job: Outlining expectations for employees ensures they know what is expected of them. Create Quarterly Reviews using your intranet’s Online Forms to show company priorities as well as individual goals.
- Team: You spend the majority of your time in the office! When employees are isolated to a department or are new to the company, there can be a sense of exclusion. Some tips to improve a sense of belonging are; ensure you have an engaging Employee Directory, meaning; schedule a photo day so everyone has a picture with their profile, and provide incentives for adding an ‘about me’ or ‘job’ description. Also – consider Team Building events as they have many benefits!
3. Employee Retention
Nothing can decrease employee morale much like excessive employee turnover. From losing your ‘work friend’ to a vital IT or Support resource, employee turnover can leave a big hole and create job insecurity for the employees that remain. With that in mind, studies found that companies that implement regular employee feedback have 14.9% lower turnover rates. Your intranet is an amazing tool for collecting, scheduling, and implementing employee feedback. Want to receive feedback from employees on a new policy? Create an Online Survey Quick Poll to determine what employees think. Want to get feedback from an individual employee? Schedule regular meetings and encourage 2-ways conversation. Finally, want employees to know they are being heard? Share how feedback helped shape a company’s decision.
Have you found a way to boost employee morale at your company? We’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.
HR Intranet Guide
Discover how the HR Guide to an Employee-Based Intranet eBook can improve employee engagement and streamline HR processes.
