Boost staff morale or risk loss of productivity

Morale is crucial

A study from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Employee Outlook has a message for employers all over the world - boost staff morale or risk loss of productivity.

The psychologists who undertook the study found that employees suffered a large loss of productivity and falling retention levels due to bad morale in the work place. While the survey was primarily done in the UK, where it was reported that job satisfaction levels across the workforce had fallen by almost a quarter since spring 2009, the results could beneficial to bosses around the world.

Speaking of the survey's results, OPP consultant Catherine Ellwood cautioned that unless businesses do more to manage morale, worker productivity can and will drop. This, coupled with an improvement in the economic climate, could see many employees leave at the earliest opportunity.

"If morale is low in a business, employees are more likely to arrive in the morning simply to do the day job. Often the real value of a workforce can be the things they are prepared to do above and beyond the day job, and businesses should do more to ensure that they do not lose this," Ellwood said.

"Employees with low morale are also more likely to jump ship when the opportunity presents itself. A low retention rate means a loss of institutional knowledge, as well as the cost involved in training new staff members."

Preventing a staff exodus

So of course the question is, what can be done to improve morale and prevent masses of employees from seeking greener pastures? Well, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Employee Outlook has some ideas and they include:

• Focusing on the individual and making sure that employees can still see a career path in their day-to-day job.
• Engaging people with decision making - particularly during difficult times, a workforce can feel as though all the decisions are being made somewhere else and "handed down" to them.
• Working on team building - this is particularly important in a business that has experienced redundancies in the recent past. It is important for managers to look at the remaining team and explore how they will work best together.

The key thing is that a happy workforce is a productive workforce, and sometimes that means more than simply have a water cooler in the office.

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