How to Boost Employee Morale and Motivation: Powerful Strategies for a Productive Workplace

"To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace", said Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell's Soup Company.

But how do you win in the workplace?

Two essential ingredients for workplace success are the morale and motivation of your people. These are inextricably linked—to improve one is to improve them both—suggests Jennifer Lambert, Chief Strategy Officer at TERRA Staffing Group.

The benefits of workplace morale and motivation are significant. "Motivated employees are productive, efficient, and more likely to stay," explains Harrisons, a leading Australian HR consultancy, while "low workplace morale decreases employee motivation, engagement, and interest in their work ... [costing] US businesses billions of dollars [in lost productivity] every year", says Lambert.

Given how vital your people's morale and motivation are for their success and your organization's, can you really afford to ignore them?

This article will explore concrete actions and tips on how to boost employee morale and motivation. We share multiple tried-and-tested strategies, so we trust there will be something fitting your organizational context. 

🌱 Offer career development opportunities

Offer your people career development opportunities to uplift their skills and boost their motivation, including:

Professional growth

By investing in your people's professional growth, you'll enhance their skills and knowledge while demonstrating a commitment to their careers. This helps to boost their satisfaction and productivity.

You can support professional growth through:

• Training and workshops—Provide learning opportunities through training programs and workshops that impart new skills, align with your people's career plans, and keep your people updated with industry trends.
• Promotions—Prioritize internal promotions to advance your people's careers while motivating and supporting them through carefully designed career paths for different roles and levels.
• Lateral moves—Promote your people's career mobility through opportunities for lateral moves, encouraging employee development through experiencing different roles and responsibilities.

Mentorship programs

Implement mentorship programs to boost your people's engagement by pairing less experienced employees with seasoned professionals to facilitate knowledge transfer and provide valuable guidance. This also helps improve their leadership skills while combating low employee morale, if it exists.

Educational assistance

Offer tuition reimbursements and other educational assistance to support your people in improving their knowledge and education. This may include covering the costs of university courses, certifications, or specialized training. It shows that you're willing to invest in your people's long-term development and promotes employee satisfaction and loyalty.

➡️ Engage your people, motivate them, and help them thrive through effective career development and succession planning.

💼 Build a supportive leadership team

Supportive leaders create a positive work environment and help boost employee morale and motivation. Develop your leaders to:

Be more supportive and effective

Train your managers and equip them with skills in communication, empathy, conflict resolution, and motivational techniques. This will help them become influential leaders and coaches who understand the needs of their teams and inspire and motivate their people.

Encourage constructive feedback

Encourage your managers to give effective feedback while being approachable and willing to listen to the concerns and ideas of their people. Leverage 360-degree feedback so your managers are kept accountable by their peers, leaders, and direct reports.

Show appreciation

Remind your managers to acknowledge their people's efforts and achievements through gestures like call-outs or personal notes of thanks, reinforcing a sense of value and purpose and driving better engagement and performance from your people.

➡️ Nurture your leaders to be inspirational motivators and supportive coaches through individual development plans and coaching skills training. 

👂 Collect feedback and involve your people

When employees feel valued and have a say in what affects them, they're more likely to be engaged and committed to their roles. Seek honest feedback to understand what your people want to be involved in and where their motivations lie.

Ways to seek feedback include:

Goal-setting

Involve your people in setting goals and fostering ownership, engagement, and personal connection.

Promote smart goals, i.e., specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, to provide structure and focus to your people's objectives.

➡️ Check out these 15 examples of SMART goals that inspire and motivate growth. 

Employee suggestion programs

Encourage employees to submit ideas for improving processes, products, or the workplace environment. By inviting these suggestions, you demonstrate that you value your people's input, promoting increased morale and empowerment.

Participative decision-making

Welcome your people's involvement in decision-making to make them feel respected, valued, and motivated. Include opportunities to directly impact their work experience. Some examples include committees or focus groups where employees from different levels and departments provide input on organizational issues.

➡️ Hear directly from your people and learn about their motivations through employee listening sessions and employee feedback surveys. 

✊ Focus on employee empowerment

Employee empowerment means giving your people the autonomy, authority, and resources to make decisions and take action in their areas of expertise, encouraging positive employee morale and a sense of ownership.

Ways to empower your people include:

Decision-making autonomy

Trust your people to make important decisions to boost their confidence and demonstrate your faith in their abilities. This engenders a level of trust that motivates them to be more engaged and committed to their work.

Opportunities for skills development

Give your people access to training through a well-designed learning management system and workshops.

Also, involve them in cross-functional projects to boost their skills, competencies, and professional development. This shows that you actively support their career and professional development.

Encouraging employee-led initiatives

Coach your people to lead initiatives that align with their interests and your organization's goals, fostering a culture of creativity and innovation. Use this as an opportunity to impart the benefits of coaching, such as boosting employee morale, facilitating deeper knowledge retention, and motivating higher levels of commitment.

📊 Use performance incentives

Performance incentives improve employee morale and motivation by directly recognizing your people for achieving their objectives. Incentives are also a powerful way to develop employee performance and enhance job satisfaction while encouraging employees to perform at their best.

There are several types of incentive structures to use, including:

Incentives tied to performance goals

Incentive programs directly linked to performance goals, such as bonuses or rewards for exceeding targets, focus your people's efforts on goal management and achieving their objectives while providing a tangible source of motivation.

Non-monetary incentives

Incentivization through non-monetary rewards such as bonus vacation days, flexible working arrangements, or professional development opportunities motivate those who favor the qualitative aspects of their role. This translates to a way of improving employee morale by enhancing your people's working arrangements.

Team-based incentives

Rewarding your people for their collective team performance is a way to foster collaboration, encourage a shared purpose and vision, and boost company culture. Popular team-based incentives include team outings, group bonuses, and gain-sharing (where employees are rewarded as a group for measurable achievements in agreed areas).

➡️ Discover how to boost employee morale and motivation by leveraging performance management best practices.

💬 Ensure effective communication

Effective communication is essential for generating and maintaining high employee morale. It can also boost company morale by encouraging your people to share ideas and engender a sense of trust by communicating openly.

Ways to promote effective communication include:

Open, honest, and transparent communication

Open lines of communication help your people stay informed about organizational goals, changes, and expectations. Transparency means that rumors or misunderstandings are minimized, and your people are more likely to be engaged and motivated, contributing to positive employee morale.

Open-door communication policy

Supercharge employee communication by maintaining an open-door policy so that your people can freely communicate with any member of management without fear of reprisal. This enhances company culture by promoting openness, accessibility, and an environment in which your people feel comfortable sharing their ideas, concerns, and feedback.

Knowing that management is approachable and willing to listen can significantly boost employee morale and motivation, encouraging a more collaborative and inclusive workplace.

One-on-ones and skip-level meetings

Regular one-on-one meetings provide a forum where managers and their reports can develop a rapport and a sense of trust, resulting in a candid and meaningful space for discussing progress, addressing concerns, and setting goals.

Complement this with meetings between your people and their higher-level managers, i.e., "skipping a level" in your organization's management hierarchy. These meetings will strengthen the bonds between different role levels.

➡️ Build rapport across role levels at your organization through constructive skip-level meetings using these 42 insightful questions.

💸 Offer fair compensation and benefits

Ensuring that the salaries and benefits you offer are competitive and commensurate with market standards helps you attract and retain top talent. It also makes your people feel valued for their efforts and fairly compensated for their work, helping to maintain motivation levels and employee morale.

Here's what you can offer to keep compensation attractive:

Competitive salaries and benefits

Stay competitive by offering compensation packages that are vetted using compensation reviews to ensure they:

• Meet or exceed industry benchmarks. 
• Align with your organization's objectives.
• Comply with regulatory standards. 
• Promote equity and transparency.

You can also periodically check if your people are happy with their compensation arrangements by seeking feedback through employee benefits surveys to gauge preferences and satisfaction levels. This will give you a sense of where your compensation arrangements are working well and where they're not, how they differ across departments or role levels, and how to combat low employee morale.

Performance-based bonuses

Offer bonuses linked to specific performance metrics, such as sales, quality, productivity, or customer satisfaction, to provide a financial incentive for high achievement and hard work. This approach can effectively motivate employees driven by extrinsic rewards while linking employee goals to organizational goals and fostering a culture of accountability and excellence.

Flexible benefit options

Flexible benefits allow you to tailor benefits packages for specific roles or personal arrangements to customize compensation to suit individual needs and lifestyles. Examples include:

• health insurance plan choices;
• additional vacation days;
• access to wellness programs;
• flexible time to accommodate religious or cultural practices.

Flexible benefits also recognize diversity and individual circumstances, showing commitment to inclusive workforce practices.

➡️ Build trust and motivation through thoughtful and transparent compensation conversations to boost engagement and better retain your people

👏 Don't sleep on recognition and appreciation

Recognition and appreciation go a long way towards motivating your people and lifting their morale. It also benefits employees and organizations in several related ways, including through higher levels of employee retention, productivity, and morale, as well as by improving company culture and fostering heightened innovation and creativity.

With up to two-thirds of workers likely to leave their jobs if they don't feel appreciated, proper recognition is an area you can't afford to ignore. There are many ways to recognize your people. Some examples include:

Public recognition

Call out exceptional performance in company-wide meetings, newsletters, or social media platforms to celebrate your people's hard work and accomplishments. This not only boosts the morale of the recognized employee but also motivates others by showing that their efforts can be similarly acknowledged.

Personalized appreciation

Recognizing employees through personalized appreciation can have a profound impact on employee morale. It can be through a thank-you note, a small gift, a customized email, or one-on-one conversations to express gratitude. Such gestures are powerful demonstrations of valuing individual contributions and acknowledging the efforts of your people.

Employee of the Month programs

Set up a leaderboard to recognize employees who have shown initiative, produced exceptional outcomes, or have made a significant contribution in some other way. Beyond highlighting individual achievements, these programs encourage a competitive yet positive atmosphere in the workplace. You'll motivate your people to excel while promoting teamwork and camaraderie, boosting morale.

You should manage such programs carefully, however, to avoid perceptions of favoritism or a sense of "round-robin" rotations, in which every employee has a turn to be recognized regardless of their outcomes, which devalues the credibility of the recognition.

Be clear about the criteria for the recognition and highlight values and behaviors as well as outcomes—this helps deter those who wish to perform "by any means" rather than those demonstrating the "right approach."

➡️ Learn about the exemplary approach to employee recognition built into performance reviews at Zappos.

🌈 Create an inclusive work environment

A workplace culture that values respect, inclusivity, and collaboration encourages a sense of belonging and unity in your people.

Attitudes to work are changing due to generational shifts and global demographic trends, so an increased emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a crucial pillar of modern workplace culture.

You can address and improve DEI through:

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

Implement training programs to educate employees about unconscious biases and develop guidelines for equitable hiring practices. Also, create resource groups for under-represented communities.

By striving to make all of your people feel valued and respected, regardless of their background or identity, you'll generate tangible benefits for your organization, as studies have shown.

Channels for open communication and feedback

Create channels for open communication and feedback through surveys, focus groups, or forums to encourage your people to share their ideas and concerns. Position your managers as being approachable and responsive. This creates an environment of transparency and trust, making your people feel secure in addressing their DEI concerns and feeling valued for being accepted as they are.

Improved levels of work-life balance and flexibility

Flexible working hours, remote work options, and other policies to support diverse lifestyles and personal needs help to promote an inclusive and accommodating workplace. This boosts morale amongst those feeling marginalized, like people with religious beliefs, cultural restrictions, or family responsibilities requiring adjustments to regular work hours. Such practices contribute to a more cohesive, productive, and happy workplace.

➡️ Discover 32 practical ways to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and boost engagement and creativity amongst your people.

⚖️ Promote a healthy work-life balance

Promote a work-life balance that gives your people ample opportunities for recharging and recalibrating while respecting their time outside of work. This helps them support healthy levels of well-being while enhancing their overall job satisfaction.

Promote a supportive work environment by offering:

Flexible working arrangements

Provide options for remote work, flexible hours, part-time work, time off for personal needs, and other ways to support your people in balancing their professional and personal lives.

Flexible working arrangements are associated with: 

• increased productivity; 
• higher levels of employee well-being and happiness; 
• lower absenteeism; 
• greater job satisfaction and engagement;
• lower staff turnover, amongst other benefits.

Regular breaks and time off

Encouraging your people to take regular breaks and utilize their vacation time benefits them and your organization.

Skipping breaks can lead to burnout and stress, whereas taking breaks—even a few minutes—promotes increased productivity, job satisfaction, mental health and well-being, and engagement at work. 

Similarly, taking a vacation results in improved focus when employees return to work, boosting productivity, relieving stress, and cultivating a more creative mindset.

You can support breaks and time off by implementing policies to discourage working out-of-hours and promoting taking time off without feeling guilty.

Resources for mental and physical well-being

Help your people improve their mental and physical well-being by providing resources such as fitness classes, access to wellness programs, mental health support, mindfulness training, and designated areas for meditation and restfulness at work.

➡️ Be on the lookout for workaholism at your workplace by monitoring the telltale signs and symptoms of overworking.

👯 Organize team-building activities

Team building activities offer a dynamic approach to building rapport, boosting morale, and fostering more meaningful connections at work. They should promote camaraderie, strengthen relationships, and promote a sense of unity and collaboration in the workplace.

Popular types of team-based activities include:

Team outings, events, and activities

Team activities like group dinners, sports days, or cultural outings allow employees to interact in a non-work setting. They help break down barriers, improve communication, and build trust among team members, contributing to more cohesive and motivated teams.

Team building activities also lead to a range of additional benefits, according to Indeed, including:

• Increased levels of productivity, creativity, morale, and trust.
• Discovering strengths and weaknesses among team members and which members tend to work well together.
• Developing confidence among team members who perform well in activities, highlighting competencies that otherwise may not have had a chance to flourish in the business-as-usual work environment.

Team volunteering

Volunteering as a team is another way to boost employee morale and motivation while contributing to worthy causes that team members may feel strongly about.

Examples include:

• community services projects;
• charity and fundraising events;
• volunteering at local facilities such as aged care or critical care centers to provide entertainment and companionship or to assist with practical projects like landscaping and meal preparation.

Additionally, implementing volunteer appreciation initiatives can further enhance team cohesion and satisfaction, recognizing the efforts and contributions of team members towards making a positive impact in the community.

Professional development workshops

Professional development classes and workshops contribute to personal and professional growth while encouraging teamwork and collaboration. They help your people learn new skills and nurture a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Professional development opportunities also help employees with the following, suggests Chandler Macleod:

• Sets up better career opportunities in the future.
• Promotes confidence through better knowledge and understanding.
• Facilitates networking opportunities with colleagues internal and external to your organization.
• Provides opportunities for developing skills in areas like emotional intelligence that go beyond technical knowledge and competencies.

🧘 Create remote-friendly wellness programs

The modern workplace is characterized by digital connectivity and flexible working options, with many organizations now embracing remote and hybrid working arrangements for their people.

This means that some employees have limited in-person engagement with their colleagues and may experience feelings of isolation. A recent report found, for instance, that 23% of remote workers struggle with loneliness, 22% find it difficult to "unplug," and 16% have trouble focusing.

Since many of your people may be working remotely for all or part of their working hours, focusing on wellness initiatives that support physical and mental health is essential. 

Here are some approaches:

Virtual fitness classes and challenges

Virtual fitness classes are easy to implement using digital streaming technologies. Classes could include yoga sessions, meditation workshops, fitness competitions, or daily step counts using company-wide global tracking apps.

Initiatives like these promote well-being while providing opportunities for your people to interact and engage in fun and supportive settings.

Online mental health resources and workshops

Online resources to support your people's mental health, such as stress management webinars, mindfulness sessions, or virtual counseling services, promote the emotional well-being of your remote employees.

Such resources can help your people manage work-related stress, anxiety, and other mental health challenges, contributing to a healthier, happier work environment with higher levels of employee morale.

Virtual social events and team building

Social events and virtual team-building activities support your remote employees by giving them connection opportunities and fostering diversity and inclusion across your organization. 

Examples include:

• virtual coffee breaks;
• online game nights;
• virtual team lunches;
• virtual book clubs;
• collaborative problem-solving challenges;
• TED-talk discussions;
• online quiz sessions.

➡️ Enhance employee wellness by using these 25 easy-to-launch virtual wellness ideas for remote employees.

⚒️ Tools and methods for evaluating changes in employee morale and motivation

Having looked at several practical approaches for boosting employee morale and motivation, let's consider some ways to measure and monitor changes in the levels of morale and motivation of your people:

Surveys

Gather anonymous feedback on various areas, such as the work environment, leadership, job satisfaction, or employee engagement, using surveys.

Surveys are a tried and tested approach and are relatively easy to implement, so they're a popular method for assessing employee morale and motivation. With periodic surveys, you can also collect data over time to identify trends.

The effectiveness of surveys, however, depends on how they are designed and the honesty of the survey responses. Poorly designed surveys or a lack of anonymity can lead to biased responses and incorrect conclusions. It's essential to carefully plan, design, and collate surveys for the best results.

People analytics

People analytics uses data analysis to evaluate workforce metrics such as retention rates, absenteeism, and productivity levels.

High retention rates and low absenteeism, for instance, indicate positive morale and motivation. In contrast, declining retention rates may indicate potential problems.

People analytics provides objective measures that can highlight issues directly related to employee morale. Remember that the metrics require expertise, as a series of numbers viewed without proper context may not convey the full picture of employee sentiment and morale.

Referrals

Employee referrals are another way to monitor your people's morale and motivation, with high referral rates indicating a positive work environment.

When employees are more likely to recommend your organization as a good workplace, this is a sign of high morale.

Exit interviews

Exit interviews occur when employees are about to leave an organization. They typically discuss their reasons for leaving and their experiences working there.

Exit interviews can provide valuable insights into employee morale by highlighting the aspects of organizational culture, circumstances, or people interactions that may have led to the decision to leave.

A significant advantage of exit interviews is that they often solicit honest feedback since departing employees tend to be more open and candid about their experiences. However, only addressing departing employees doesn't provide a complete picture of employee sentiment in organizations. They are, therefore, best combined with other, more comprehensive metrics on employee morale and motivation.

Performance metrics

Analyzing changes in employee performance metrics over time can offer indirect clues about morale and motivation.

Improvements in productivity, quality of work, and targets achieved, for instance, can suggest positive employee morale.

Remember that it's important to consider external factors that may influence performance trends, like market conditions or changes in work processes. Not taking these into account may result in incorrect conclusions about changes to employee sentiment based on performance trend data alone.

Focus groups

Employee focus groups involve gathering a small group of employees to discuss specific topics related to morale and motivation in a structured setting. These groups allow a deeper exploration of workplace issues and often provide rich qualitative insights that are difficult to obtain through other methods.

While offering the potential for a nuanced understanding of employee sentiment, focus groups can be time-consuming and expensive to organize. They may not be representative of the entire organization.

➡️ Elevate your team's spirit: Boost morale and motivation with Zavvy

Zavvy has a comprehensive range of cutting-edge tools and software platforms to elevate your people's morale and motivation using creative and innovative approaches. Key areas in which Zavvy can help include:

Employee development and empowerment

Provide your people with personal and professional growth, empowering them to make decisions while supporting their overall well-being in the workplace:

• Deliver fantastic onboarding experiences for your new starters, engaging and motivating them from their very first day and even before their first day, through thoughtful preboarding.
• Provide access to world-class training resources and link competencies to learning events to identify specific development goals.
• Using competency models, develop your leaders and your individual contributors with the specific skills and behaviors they require.
• Set up regular check-ins between managers and their direct reports, naming each meeting to clarify its purpose, e.g., performance check-in or development check-in.

Feedback and recognition

Gather feedback from your people and recognize their efforts to make informed decisions and boost motivation:

• Use pulse surveys, new hire surveys, and exit interviews to collect employee feedback.
• Conduct competency-based performance appraisals to gain feedback on your people's skills and behavior development.
• Leverage industry-leading feedback survey templates to gather feedback using best-in-class formats.

Compensation and benefits

Offer competitive compensation and performance-based incentives to reward and motivate your people:

• Conduct regular compensation reviews and monitor your organization's people analytics to stay competitive and retain top talent.
• Link your people's performance appraisals with their compensation to increase competitive transparency, align compensation with outcomes, and boost motivation and engagement.

Work environment and culture

Create a supportive and inclusive work culture and promote work-life balance to promote satisfaction and engagement. 

Boost the employee experience at your organization through initiatives like workflow automation and transparent career pathing. 

📅 Book a free 30-minute demo to see how Zavvy can boost the morale and motivation of your people, elevating their performance and satisfaction.

❓ FAQs

What destroys morale in the workplace?

Poor leadership, lack of recognition, ineffective communication, overwork without fair compensation, and a toxic work environment destroy workplace morale. These contribute to lower levels of motivation, engagement, and productivity and increase employee dissatisfaction.

What is a good morale booster?

A good morale booster for employees is recognizing and appreciating their efforts and achievements. Other good morale boosters include:

• Offering opportunities for professional growth.
• Fostering an inclusive work environment.
• Ensuring open communication.

How do you rebuild staff morale?

You can rebuild staff morale by communicating clearly and transparently, recognizing employee contributions, encouraging team collaboration, and supporting career growth. After a round of layoffs, for instance, communicate the reasons for the layoffs transparently, provide stability through clear direction on plans, offer emotional support, reinforce the value of each team member, and involve the remaining employees in decision-making to rebuild morale.

What is the link between motivation and morale?

Motivation is the drive to achieve goals, while morale is employees' overall satisfaction and well-being. High morale boosts motivation by creating a positive work environment where employees are more inclined to contribute and succeed. In contrast, low morale diminishes motivation and leads to lower levels of productivity and job satisfaction.