How To Improve Morale When The Outlook Is Dim

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm by Denise O'Berry

My CEO told me on Friday on a journey back from London, that staff morale following a survey is very low. Obviously there is the credit crunch situation, and I can look to introduce CRM, but wondered if there was anywhere I could look to look for innovation marketing/training team building exercises, games, information on building staff morale effectively and anything really that could help. We are a small company of 44 and it worries me staff are feeling like this. I did talk to her about internal communication processes etc etc, but any help you could give would be wonderful!

The Team Doc Says…

It should worry you that the staff are feeling like they are. Congratulations for realizing you must take some sort of action.

Your first approach was the right one. When morale is low, communication — from the top and from the supervisory level — is the best way to move morale in the right direction. This is not the time for leadership to hide in a cave.

Rather than seeking games or training to help your organization, take some time to put together a communication plan. You’ll want to identify 1) who the audience is, 2) what message(s) you need to share, 3) the method you will use, and 4) the frequency of the communication.

Make sure you take advantage of the many methods available to communicate within your organization. Absolutely do not (I repeat — do not) just use email for your communication. Your primary method should be face to face. Your leadership should be talking to the team members, your supervisors should be talking to their teams.

Here are some ideas, in addition to face to face meetings, that you can use to help connect to team members.

Have the CEO record short (5 minutes or less) podcasts or video casts to distribute and post on your intranet site.
Create a blog and have the CEO and other company leaders post regularly (daily would be best, once a week is OK).
Start a print newsletter that can be distributed monthly.
Set up a feedback loop so team members can ask questions. This could be a simple suggestion box, a special email address, a blog comments section or area of your intranet that everyone knows about.

Remember that communication is a two way street, so make sure your environment fosters that exchange of information. Get started now and even if the credit crunch takes longer than we hope, you’ll be well on your way to improving the morale of the team members in your organization.

And one more thing. Once you have your communication plan ready, don’t forget the most important step — implementation. Start now.

What do you think reader? Are there other things they should be doing? Please leave a comment.