Team morale is the overall outlook that your employees have working within a group of coworkers who share a common goal or task. It includes their feelings, attitude, and general satisfaction working with the team.
Team morale is affected by several factors including the type of work they’re doing, work-life balance, internal and external motivations, access to tools and resources and available opportunities for learning and growth.
It takes time to nurture a strong team morale. And once you have it, you must maintain it, or it could quickly disappear. If you are currently managing a team whose morale is diminishing, here are 5 ways you can help rebuild it.
How To Boost Your Team’s Morale
There are several different methods and tips for rebuilding and maintaining a good team morale. Here are some of our favourites …
✅ Give More RecognitionThe importance of recognizing good work and celebrating milestones can not be expressed enough. Unfortunately, day to day work, the stress of deadlines and workloads can distract us from giving the recognition our teams and team members deserve.
But reminding your team that you value their hard work and appreciate all the effort they are putting in is inexpensive, easy to do, and a great way to boost morale.
When giving recognition, remember these tips to make your compliments go farther:
- Make sure you specify what the recipient has done so they know your recognition is sincere and well deserved
- Recognize staff in the presence of others, whether they are clients, staff or management to give your team member an extra boost of morale
- Be authentic to avoid sounding superficial
One way to celebrate a job well done is to give recognition during a team thank you party. We've got an amazing line-up of action-packed team games to choose from. Check them out...
It’s important for each team member to have individual goals that they work to achieve for their own development. But it’s equally important for your team to have goals that they are tasked at reaching together.
Some of these goals should be substantial achievements related to projects, but you will also want smaller goals that are easier to achieve. Especially when the project goal is especially challenging or time consuming. You could even assign some fun recreational goals, such as topping your team score during a trivia night. These types of goals will increase camaraderie, which also helps increase morale.
Achieving common goals requires inter-personal skills and collaboration. We can recommend several types of collaborative team activities that focus on those areas.
If you can see signs that your team’s morale is heading for a downward trend, you will want to act. Signs that morale is decreasing includes:
- A consistently poor attitude
- Declining work performance or quality of work
- Spreading gossip and rumours
- Increased tardiness or absences
- Lack of enthusiasm
If you see any of these signs, there are several different approaches you can take. What works best for your team members will depend on each person.
Some tactics you can try are sharing a relatable personal story where you were experiencing low morale, and sitting down with the staff member to let them know you recognize they are having a hard time and that they can come to you to discuss any changes they need to help improve their experience. You may need to consider handing on a task that they don’t seem to be enjoying to help lighten their load and get them over the hurdle.
Teambonders offers group activities that are focused on health and well-being.
✅ Make work more educational!
Training and education is another way to build team morale. For example, if low morale is caused by conflicts between employees, training in conflict resolution and communication skills can help. In addition, providing an activity that is inspirational and motivational can lift your team members spirits.
Teambonders can provide guest speakers and keynote addresses on a variety of topics, as well as fun learning activities that encourage creativity and play. Browse our programs...
✅ Make work more fun!
When you plan a team building activity, you are creating a fun work environment, showing appreciation and building strong bonds between team members. All of this creates a healthy corporate culture that improves employee engagement and boosts employee morale.
There are many different events you can choose from when scheduling a team building experience. One idea is to get everyone out of the office and into a new environment for an activity that is fast-paced, energetic, and interactive. Check out our race and hunt team programs.
These are just some of the many ways that you can help boost team morale. Having open communication, embracing honesty, learning how each of your team members expresses emotions and involving your team in decision making are also effective tools.
For more information on improving team morale or for help planning a moral boosting team activity, contact us today.
