Low spirits lower profits writes Dave Leyshon, in Business Edge magazine in August 09
Disgruntled employees’ treatment of customers is often one of the biggest revenue killers, while their own high turnover raises recruitment and training costs.
People unhappy at work are also a growing part of the UK’s annual sick-leave bill which runs into billions of pounds.
Small, mostly costless, adjustments can give morale an instant lift:
- share the burden: stay behind to be with staff who are forced to work long hours, and chip in to the tasks that are overhanging them; a problem shared is easier to bear, even if not exactly halved
- show kindness: the worse someone’s feeling and the less they expect, the more boosted they are by small gestures
- elasticate the shackles: give people as much freedom as is compatible with doing the work - no unnecessary conduct or dress codes, more time off the job if people work more efficiently on it
- provide an escape: if an activity’s inherently spirit-sapping, ensure there’s a place people can flee to recharge – e.g. chill-out room, regular works outing, alternation with more interesting jobs
Longer-term restorers of morale safeguard against further loss:
- care with up and down-sizing: compulsory job cuts are among the biggest morale killers; even those kept on can have confidence crushed even while the axe hangs above then and ‘survivor guilt’ after it falls on friends or colleagues. However growth – by recruitment or merger - can also hurt, as newcomers upset old networks and routines
- fairness on pay: top rates aren’t essential, but fair rewards are. Share-out of profits must be weighted to those who most deserve it. ‘Rewards for failure’ at the top of the tree demoralise those on lower branches, especially when their own rises have been strictly performance linked
- peer pleasure: how co-workers regard them is central to how good employees feel. Praise means more to them and criticism is taken as constructive, when it comes to them directly from a colleague. blame is compounded, arousing resentment, when given in front of one
- talking cure: letting people speak freely helps gauge the extent of low morale, and how best to raise it. Knowing their words will be heard, and not held against them, is their first upward step.
The most-cited morale slayer, as economy enters tougher times, is a leader who can’t communicate, or inspire trust, when there’s crisis in the air.
