Methods to Increase Workplace Morale
When I was leading a team at Shopee Philippines, a leading ecommerce platform, revenue targets and deliverable deadlines were constantly looming overhead. Despite these stressors, I put in the additional effort to understand my team and to make maximize their morale. I determined that focusing on morale was effective because 1) employees across the company, as well as new applicants, were asking to join my team because they heard about the positive growth environment, 2) our team produced the strongest sales growth results and continued to push for more, and 3) turnover rate was one of the lowest within the company over my 3 year tenure.
Morale is the most important resource in a team or company. A team with high morale can work hard, produce strong results, and desire to continue working hard and producing strong results. A team with low morale will struggle to produce meaningful work and often face high turnover rates. Managing workplace morale can be built by understanding our team members' [working] relationships, problems, and goals.
Relationships forms the base of the pyramid because understanding our team's relationships will enable us to communicate in the appropriate manner to further understand their problems. Then, we can look to understand their problems, so that we can lower their hurdles to achieving strong results. Lastly, we need to understand their goals in order to motivate them. Once we have developed an understanding of these three building blocks, we can make the appropriate adjustments to optimize for morale.
Understand their Relationships
Over several days, I could sense uneasiness from one team member throughout the workdays, so I spoke with the individual and discovered she was unhappy because she was not being challenged enough in her current role. To resolve the issue, I carved out additional impactful projects for her. However, I also knew that this team member was close with another individual on the team. Since I know thoughts and feelings about work are often shared between close team members, I reached out to the other team member as well to chat, and found out that, even though he did not appear uneasy, he too was unfulfilled in his current role, so I carved a separate meaningful project to drive his mental stimulation. Team members with low morale will spread their low morale and team members with high morale will share their excitement.
Understanding an individual's close relationships in the workplace is powerful because it can dictate social influence, which is key to managing workplace morale. Social influence can reduce workplace morale, as we saw in relationship above, or increase workplace morale if confidants continue to be placed in the correct environment. Therefore, we as managers, need to first develop a firm understanding of the social working relationships within our organization and second leverage this knowledge to make the appropriate adjustments for each individual.
We can develop an understanding of relationships by paying attention to how different team members spend their time with other individuals. When they need help, who do they rely on? During lunch, which team members sits together? Who takes coffee/tea breaks together? Who arrives at work together? Who leaves work together? Who laughs at who's joke? We do not need to vigilantly watch every interaction, but rather to simply notice what is happening as it unfolds before our regular routine. I understand that those working remotely will need to rely on different social tells and may not be able to use all of the practices outlined above.
Once we understand which individuals are close, we can leverage this information to drive positive influence and gauge proxies. For example, if one individual is close with three other individuals, we can drive positive influence across all four individuals by making adjustments to improve the one individual's morale. The specific adjustments we can make will be discussed in the following two sections. In addition to driving influence, we can also use our understanding of relationships to gauge proxies, similar to our the first example of this section. If we understand the feelings of one individual, those with close relationships to said individual will likely share similar feelings.
Understand their Problems
As my team grew, I eventually was able to bring on a dedicated data analyst. My work became much easier after she joined, however, I noticed she was always staying at work after I left and often came in tired the following day. After conversing with her, I learned that she had been working late nights regularly to finish reports. Depending on the situation, I believe late nights may be necessary if a decision needs to be made urgently, but in this scenario, adjustments could be made to prioritize workplace morale over one additional report. So we sat down and linked every report to a decision. Reports that would not result in an immediate decision could be completed at a later point.
To optimize for workplace morale, we need to have an understanding of our team's problems, ranging from workload problems, work inefficiency problems, work interpersonal problems, and non-work problems. For avoidance of doubt, we do not exist to solve their problems. But through understanding their problems, we can help guide the team to make choices to address their individual problems.
Team members are more likely to open up and talk about their problems after rapport has been built with the manager. Please expect a future article describing building rapport as a manager. After they have opened up about their problems, we can make the appropriate adjustments to optimize for morale. If there are inefficiencies, can a process be created or improved? If there are interpersonal issues at work, can relationships be built to meld forces? If there are workload or personal problems, can the work be re-prioritized to provide breathing room? When optimizing for morale, a manager will find a way to make the answer to the previous three if statements "yes".
Understand their Goals
On a quarterly basis, or even more frequently, I had one on ones with my team leads to understand their goals. I can recall two specific individuals that each had a different vision and thereby requiring tailored adjustments to optimize for their morale. One individual had a clear vision for her future. I learned that she wanted to be an entrepreneur in a few years. Another individual was a hard worker, but was not certain about his professional goals. Instead of pressing further, I asked about activities that he enjoyed, both work and non-work related. I learned that his top priority is to be a provider for his family.
In line with my article about Motivation, once we understand our team members' goals, we need to find the overlap with the business' goals. As an aspiring entrepreneur, skills ranging from managing others to streamlining operations are important. To bring home a larger salary, one can look to master in-demand skills, which in today's business world are increasingly about programming and data science. So in both cases, I carved off projects that could help my teammates work towards their goals. Once we have paired the right projects with the right people, they will higher morale showing up to work each day, knowing that they are working towards their goals.
Closing Remarks
Critics will say optimizing for morale will yield less output and/or worse results. From my experiences, working to optimize morale is a long term investment. There are some circumstances where morale needs to be sacrificed for short term needs, however, stronger morale will yield stronger results over the long run because more talented team members will be retained and they will be more driven to work towards the organization's goals.
Morale is a team's most important resource because it empowers the team to continue to strive towards producing more higher quality results. We build morale by spending our mental capacity to understand our team. These efforts to understand their relationships, problems, and goals and making appropriate adjustments based off of our understanding will demonstrate that we care about them. Once team members recognize that their manager is supporting them, they will have higher morale and ultimately become more effective.
