You don’t have to present an hour long speech to boost the morale in your company. Some business owners have been known to send each employee an email or letter every once in a while. That works.
Taking a few minutes every second or third week to drop in and talk with your employees (if not more often), even with the new entry-level ones will make a big difference.
Employees like to be noticed.
They don’t want to be just a part of the machine.
Respect them. Give them a tip or two on how they can improve their work, or even better, tell them how good a job they are doing.
If you can’t be in contact with your employees that often, get your manager to play the role. A good manager will be doing this constantly. The most strategically focused companies in the world (and I don’t mean the biggest) have a brief meeting each and every day. That includes executives, managers, all the way down the line.
One each week at the management level and a monthly meeting with senior executives. We won’t go into this in great detail, because there should also be a quarterly and annual meeting – but what’s at work here is a system that ensures everyone knows what is going on, and what they should be doing to achieve the companies priorities. This is regardless of their department or function at the company. Are you doing this with your business?
If you’re not, I’d recommend picking up a copy of Verne Harnish’s book “The Rockefeller Habits.” The book covers habits of successful people and gives much more detail on making these meetings, routines and systems work.
Now back to the day to day stuff…
Just saying “Hi Cindy” or “How was your weekend James?” is better than nothing. But take the communication with your employees and managers up a notch to talk about customers, any challenges they’re having, areas for improvement, and what is working. Make them feel you value their input.
A word of caution: If they’re comfortable talking about their personal lives, great. But you don’t want to become a counselor when things go wrong.
Provide support yes, but a bad day or a fight with the wife (or husband) shouldn’t become an excuse that affects performance. Sure, everyone has ups and downs. But as an ambassador of your brand and your business, you need to ask employees to separate their home from work.
Likewise, you need to respect their personal lives and understand when they need time off or when they request to leave early in order to attend a special event or appointment.
A good friend of mine used to work for one of the largest airlines in the world. It troubled me when she told me that managers were rude to her and other employees if something went wrong – even if it wasn’t their fault.
By contrast their were some managers within the airline who were quite incompetent and got little work done yet were left alone because of their seniority.
The newer staff on the other hand were worked hard, pushed to do overtime and treated poorly. This happened time and again. When I sat down and talked with my friend about this in more detail, she told me there was no one she could talk to. She liked the job, but it was too stressful. There was no outlet for her and other workers to get help with these challenges.
Likewise they were never told “job well done.”
That’s why it didn’t surprise me when I figured out that this company had nearly a 70% turnover rate per year.
The moral here is to make sure you have a system in place to communicate with your employees and ensure that you or your managers are taking action to keep your employees’ morale high.
Another great book that covers the issues of communicating with employees and gives great advice is Jack Welch’s “Winning.”