7 Ways to Boost Employee Morale

The way your professionals feel about their jobs can affect their productivity and quality of work. Businesses may find themselves struggling to maintain high motivation among their employees and it can be challenging to determine how to boost employees’ morale. We’ve compiled a helpful list of seven ways to boost employee morale to help keep your professionals excited and engaged with their workplace.

1. Recognize employees’ achievements

Those who feel unappreciated by their employer will lack motivation and may grow to resent their role in the company. Acknowledging the accomplishments of your team will ensure that they know you appreciate their contributions to the workplace. You can involve the entire department when congratulating employees to build a positive company culture. While verbal recognition is helpful, offering your professionals rewards such as gift cards or corporate gifts in exchange for their achievements can give their morale an additional boost.

2. Consider offering bonuses

Financial incentives are an effective way to boost morale for companies that can afford the extra costs. Bonuses may be used as a motivator to encourage your team to meet or surpass workplace goals, such as reaching the organization’s sales quota during its current fiscal quarter or completing important projects before a deadline.

Bonuses don’t have to cost your business thousands of dollars—even a small amount can go a long way toward increasing employees’ satisfaction. To keep costs down, you can also consider giving seasonal bonuses. These may help businesses maintain their team’s enthusiasm during busier times of the year.

3. Create a happy work environment

Finding ways to prevent negativity from generating in the workplace can help you maintain morale and make your professionals feel happier. Create a healthy work environment incorporating process, policy, and physical improvements. For example, promoting productive conflict-resolution methods can help foster effective work relationships. You can also invest in physical changes to the work environment to make it feel more inviting, like incorporating greenery in your decor and providing rooms for employees where they can recharge.

4. Offer career development opportunities

Team members who feel their work is fulfilling will have greater morale than those who feel discontent or unappeased in their role. Morale can also be low in employees who feel that they have no future with the organization, with few opportunities to grow and develop. 

Providing career development opportunities to your professionals can give them a reason to stay with the company and add depth to their current roles. For example, leaders may give additional responsibilities to their team members or invite them to participate in cross-functional projects to expand their skills and help them develop as industry professionals.

5. Encourage team collaboration

Incorporating teamwork into the workplace can lead to higher morale by helping your employees feel supported by their colleagues. Those with roles in the company that are mostly independent can sometimes feel isolated from their peers and disinterested in the organization’s culture. Alternatively, when an organization is lacking a culture of collaboration, teams may feel siloed, which can make exchanging ideas with others more difficult. Managers may increase the communication and collaboration skills of their team members by pairing employees together to complete projects or give presentations for upcoming group meetings.

6. Offer team-building activities

The bonds an employee feels with their fellow team members can significantly influence their workplace morale. Developing these connections through unique experiences will build the camaraderie of your professionals and give them a fun way to alleviate their work-related stress. Employers may designate some time on a regular cadence—such as holidays or the first month of each quarter—for activities like trivia contests, group games, or birthday celebrations. You can also coordinate group events outside the office, such as playing sports and attending team lunches. Employees who feel included in the company’s culture will find more enjoyment in their position.

7. Ask for employee feedback

Involving your professionals in workplace decisions is another way to let them know they’re an appreciated member of the company. Employee surveys provide valuable insight into which aspects of the organization ought to be examined to improve the team’s morale. If an overwhelming number of team members complain about a certain topic, then it’s in the company’s best interest to address the issue. You should regularly conduct surveys with your employees to gauge their level of job satisfaction so that problems are identified early and can be addressed as quickly as possible before they have an impact on morale.

Building high morale for your professionals will contribute to better job performance by improving their connections with fellow team members and increasing their motivation through incentives and career-growth opportunities. Any organization can use the seven methods on this list to create effective morale-boosting strategies for its employees.INTOO’s coaches help employees in every stage of their career develop strategies to meet their goals, while employers reap the benefits of increased engagement, productivity, and retention. Learn more about how our career development programs can benefit your company.

INTOO Staff Writer

INTOO staff writers come from diverse backgrounds and have extensive experience writing about topics that matter to the HR and business communities, including outplacement, layoffs, career development, internal mobility, candidate experience, succession planning, talent acquisition, and more.