Morale Problems?
You would be amazed at how many organizations today, both small and large, have a serious morale issue lurking beneath the surface of all the smiles, happy faces, agreement and apparent cooperation between employees, employees and managers, and employees and customers.
During the 30 years that I have spent in industries of all sizes, I have discovered from custom in-house bottom-up evaluation and interviews – that when this morale issue and its causes are not known, addressed, or shoved under the carpet – there is usually:
- poor productivity
- wasted time
- wasted resources
- customer turnover
- discipline issues
- a lack of creativity and imagination in problem solving
- employee turnover
- a circling of the wagons (departments and people)
- wasted profits
- and lot’s more…
How do you discover if you have a morale problem?
- don’t ask your direct reports
- don’t listen to the employees who always tell you what you want to hear
- start at the lowest level of employees
- conduct an anonymous employee survey
- use an outside resource to conduct some research
Every organization today is experiencing significant change. Change can be one of the greatest causes of poor morale. People are threatened by change and tend to pull in, hide, wait and see, not take chances, feel insecure, etc. You can’t stop the change, you probably can’t slow it down; you most likely are a victim of its relentless charge forward. So, what can you do to prevent it from having a negative impact on morale? Communicate everything (good news, as well as bad news) openly, on a timely basis, to the people who need to know or will be impacted.