How To Boost Morale and Keep Your Team Motivated

Everyone has to work. Whether you work for yourself, as a tradesperson or artisan, or in a corporate environment, going to work each day is a necessary part of life. But if you’re a team leader or manager, you have an added responsibility to help keep your team engaged and motivated. Working actively to keep morale up and showing your team that they’re appreciated should be an essential part of your management style.

How To Tell if Your Staff Have Low Morale

When your team are working through low morale, they’ll feel a general sense of dissatisfaction in their roles. Oftentimes, this can be caused by things like a perceived lack of respect, either for them as people or for their time and efforts, poor work-life balance arrangements, unclear or unrealistic expectations, lack of guidance and communication, and poor prioritisation. No one wants to work in an environment where everything is urgent at all times, and oversight is lacking from upper management.

Why Boosting Morale and Motivation Should Be Your Priority

You should want your team to be happy at work. By making sure the morale of your staff is prioritised and constantly working to boost motivation, you’ll have happier staff who are more likely to communicate effectively, work more productively, stay longer with the organisation, and have a generally more positive workplace environment.

Here are a few things you can implement to help increase worker satisfaction, boost morale and keep your team motivated at work.

Prioritise Employee Recognition

Consistent recognition and positive reinforcement will always be more effective than a one-off offering of cupcakes or pizza. This can be as simple as telling them they’re doing a good job during one-on-ones or acknowledging their efforts during team meetings.

Giving sincere and genuine thanks to your team members will always help boost their morale. Just make sure you spread the praise and recognition amongst your team so no one feels like one person is being singled out.

Offer Learning and Development

People appreciate the opportunity to upskill without having to take time off work. By offering learning and development to your team, they’ll be more likely to feel empowered within their role and that you support their career development.

There are plenty of options that you could offer, whether it’s giving them a day to attend a seminar that is relevant to their role, setting aside an afternoon so they can tune in to a webinar, or opting in to a service like LinkedIn Learning and encouraging your team to spend a few hours a week learning online.

Make Work-Life Balance a Priority

Making sure your staff understand that prioritising work-life balance is at the core of company values will ensure they stay more motivated and supported in the workplace. Modern hustle culture tells people that if they’re not working towards something, they’re failing. But without rest and recuperation, staff are more likely to burn out.

As an optional staff benefit, consider offering wellness days to rest and come back to work more energised. Give them access to employee wellbeing workshops, where they can spend some time prioritising their wellness at work. Always keep communication to work hours, ensure that full lunch breaks are being taken, and offer flexible work arrangements where possible. Not only does this keep staff motivated, but policy changes like these may help increase staff retention.

Listen to and Implement Employee Feedback

One of the easiest ways to help your team feel like they’re respected in the workplace is to take notice of when they give you feedback. As their manager, you should be offering them opportunities to become more effective in their roles through regular and effective feedback. This needs to be a two-way street.

Whether this is through a formal feedback survey, they’ve made suggestions for how they think the workplace could run more efficiently, or if they’ve highlighted ways that you can communicate more effectively, listen to your staff when they make suggestions. Implementing them when appropriate will help your team feel like they work in a collaborative environment, rather than one where the bottom line is the priority.

Have Some Fun

Whether it’s a team lunch at the end of each quarter, an early knock off on the last day in the office, an employee appreciation day, or even an end-of-financial-year party, there are plenty of ways employers can help take the pressure off and give their teams the chance to let off some steam and have fun together.

The workplace doesn’t have to be one where noses are constantly pressed to the grindstone and people dread coming into work. A few small changes can help boost morale among your team, improve company culture and all around help people be happier at work.