Does your company have an employee morale problem? If your workers are not meeting goals or avoid discussing projects with one another, then you might. Thankfully, you can improve employee morale fairly easily. It all starts with proper communication. You’ll need to utilize multiple channels of this communication in order for everything to improve. Remember that workers that communicate their needs (and have them met) are more productive than others. Here’s what you can do.
Create Communication Channels
The more ways that your employees in Ireland have to communicate with each other, the better everything will be. You’ll need to spend some time developing these channels. They won’t create themselves. However, the time put in will be worth it, since it can go a long way to improve employee morale.
Encourage the Use of Surveys
Some employees just won’t speak up when something makes them mad. They’ll continue working, but their productivity will drop. Many just want to adhere to the status quo and are afraid to rock the boat. This is where random surveys come in.
Develop a survey or two that don’t require the employees to place their names on them, and then send them out via email. You can also place them on the company intranet or server. Encourage people to honestly fill them out. Since these surveys are anonymous, your workers will be more likely, to be honest.
Develop Internal Communications Standards
Another way to improve employee morale through communication is by developing internal standards of communication. This could anything from the survey system mentioned above to a way of sending complaints to HR anonymously.
For example, the officials in Ireland take workplace harassment seriously. If you think that things may be going in your company, but your workers are afraid to speak out, then this is an issue. A system that allows for anonymous complaints can rectify things fairly easily.
Put Policies in Place
While you won’t be able to change your workplace communications culture overnight, you can take steps in this direction. It all starts with written policies. Once those policies are in place and enforced, then your employees will begin to follow suit. Just make sure that everyone understands these policies. It helps if you hold a meeting or two on them.
Holding Meetings Will Help
How often do you regularly hold meetings? If you responded with “once every six months” then that is where your problem lies. It can be tough to improve employee morale if people don’t really know their supervisors. How many layers are there between the CEO and the standard worker? If your company is like many others in Ireland, then there are more than likely many middle managers in there. You need to make sure that everyone knows everyone else by holding meetings.
Weekly Meetings Will Improve Communication
Not only do you need to hold regular meetings, but you’ll need to schedule certain types at specific times. For example, you can have weekly meetings between workers and their immediate supervisors. The best way to improve employee morale and well being at these meetings is by letting everyone have their moment to talk. Encouraging people to ask questions will help as well. It’s even better if these questions are answered.
Schedule Individual Meetings
If you truly want to improve employee morale, then you need to have individual meetings. As you can imagine, these take place between the worker and the immediate supervisor. While some of them can consist of performance reviews, what really matters is the dialog that’s created. The more that workers speak to their supervisors, the more comfortable they become. Workers that are comfortable are more likely to air grievances or ask pertinent questions. They might even have some good suggestions for improvement that can be acted upon.
Additional Ways of Improving Communication
On top of all of the methods listed above, having a little fun now and then is another great way to improve communication and morale. For example, you can have your employees meet up at an Irish pub for an evening of relaxing and entertainment. You can also schedule events, such as bowling, a nice dinner out at a restaurant, or even a “field day” where everyone goes to the same (non-work) place. Once people get to know outside of the workplace, they’ll feel more comfortable communicating.
While it may seem time-consuming to develop all of these means of communicating, the final results are what really matter. You want your employees in Ireland to discuss things with each other and feel comfortable asking questions. They won’t do this without having the right policies and tools in place. Your employees need the means to communicate with each other and their supervisors. There are many things that you can put in place to do this.
