This month, you are mandated to enjoy your job 20% more as per management
The commonly accepted "Work Week" in North America comes out to 40 hours of time punched on the clock. There is some give and take to this number, and it's not uncommon to see people pushing 50+ hours to make ends meet, but the bog standard shift that comes to mind when someone mentions a work day is 8AM to 5PM with an hour break in the middle for food and maybe a little walk if you're feeling extra motivated. It means that a person who is employed is spending (accounting for those weekends) almost a third of their day at work and in their work environment. If you want to get really technical and chop out the part of your day where you're asleep, it creeps closer to a half of your day. You can go crazy working with these numbers but at the end of it all it becomes what I call the Red Light scenario. The average person will spend about half a year waiting at a red light once it's all totaled up... you may as well find a way to enjoy that time.
The same principle holds true for the workplace. We spend half of our waking day during the week (some even longer) in a work environment, so how can you make the most out of it? I'll admit that there's not many people out there who get a massive rush out of excel spreadsheets or filing documents into folders, but the hope is that the work you do has some redeeming qualities to it.
Admittedly, this is not the case for everyone.
For those who are not currently working remote, there is another element to the workplace other than the work though. Your coworkers play a massive part in your day to day life. We can sit here and make all the comments we want about being "A Family" or "A Dream Team", but the reality is that you will likely spend more time with these people than your actual family (or at least a significant portion of your extended family).
And look, I get it, not everyone is a people person. However, if you had to spend time with people for 8 hours a day, would you rather enjoy the time you spend with them or not?
These coworkers, be it through work related or non-work related interaction, shape the company culture and influence the morale of a workplace. Morale is always a tricky thing to measure due to the personal nature it takes on. There is no metric. There is no standard. And yet it is measurable. Talk to anyone and ask how morale is at work. They will likely have an intuitive response for you, but will also have just as hard a time explaining why they came to that conclusion. Given that it's such a prevalent force in the workplace, is there any merit to trying to measure it? Is there value to be gained in studying it? In order to succeed in your industry in the 2020s, you'll find it's not just beneficial, it's a downright necessity for long term survival.
So what elements make up morale? What's the difference between good and bad morale? And what effects can morale have on the workplace and the business?
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Measuring the Unmeasurable
So how can we have a metric that is critical for creating a healthy and positive work environment but also have no way of measuring it? There is no quota that can be met and no report that can be run to gauge the morale of a workplace. Sure, you can ask an employee and they can give you an answer, but it's not like they can point to a scale and say they've earned 20 morale points or something.
Morale is not data driven... it's people driven. This means we can't treat it like a hard value to be analyzed. It's a feeling amongst a group of people, and that can't be quantified. What we can do is look at the pieces that make up that morale and find out more about what drives this mysterious force for good. There's three key points...
Purpose
People want to feel as if they are working for a reason. You're trading in the literal time of your life to attend your job, so you may as well have that effort be put to use. The purpose doesn't need to be earth shattering, but even the most hardcore "I'm only here for a paycheck" type of person can admit that if they're going to spend time doing something, it may as well be utilized in some way.
This is easiest to see when viewed from the other side. If you went into a job and knew you were going to be put to work doing a task you didn't particularly care for and monitored based on your output, would you be more or less likely to try hard if you knew that work would be thrown out at the end of the shift? Morale is partially built on people knowing they are accountable for filling their role in the team (even if it feels like you're a cog in a machine). You are contributing to something, and that feels good.
Value
Similar to purpose, value places more emphasis on the organization's view of the employee versus the employee's view of the work. A business that values it's employees and goes through the hoops to ensure the employees know that will see the benefits across the board. Employee retention and, to some degree, productivity will improve if the employees feel valued.
Value takes the form of recognition, training, and trust. When these aspects are in healthy supply, morale will rise quickly. People want to feel as if they are growing and advancing their skill set and their career (working towards their future goals and what not). If a business invests in the people, the people will invest back.
Camaraderie
You can't have a people driven force without people, and workplaces tend to have plenty of those around. There is a small library worth of material that covers hiring the right people, matching personality types, mentoring effectively, and so on. There is even more on fostering teamwork and working as a group. This all goes towards the camaraderie element.
Can you have high morale in a workplace without liking the people you work around? It's extremely hard. Again, you spend a third of your time with the people you work with, so would you rather be around people you don't like or people you do like? Morale building is more than just tolerating the person next to you though. It's about feeding off that person's energy and having a sense of shared experience. That doesn't mean it always has to be sunflowers and butterflies; sharing a particularly boring slog of a meeting, a nasty retail rush, or a bad experience with a customer can end up being a good laugh down the road with high morale. It's about feeling like you're part of the group, but it takes the group buying into it to be effective.
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Deceptively basic yet hard to master
I want to backtrack for a quick moment and review some key words from that previous section before we go too far...
Trust
Training
Teamwork
Recognition
Contribution
These are all things that I would argue any executive would want to see in a workplace. Here we can see that it's in the best interest of the workers to have these elements present at the workplace as well. And yet there are places (yes there are) that lack these elements. The reasons will vary from place to place as to why they are no longer present, but it contributes to a lower morale in these places. In layman's terms, "These are the places nobody wants to work or that get a bad reputation for their work environment".
Is that not what morale really measures? A business which possesses the three key elements from earlier and which incorporates all these benefits into their workplace practices is going to foster a team with high morale. A business which does not... well... it'll be "That place to work". It forms part of a company's workplace culture and shows up in the actions and attitudes of the team members that live in it.
Morale is not a silver bullet that can beat back human nature. You can work in a place with the world's best morale and still wake up on Friday cursing that it's not Saturday. That being said, the difference comes into play after that point. Good morale will see that person walk into work and be greeted by coworkers that (though they probably felt the same way coming to work that day) are happy to see them and slog out one last day as a unit. Bad morale... that person wasn't even given a wave as they walked in and immediately accosted at their desk because their project is on the verge of being late. Really bad morale... that person is now shopping for a new job.
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Return on investments
So you as a business decide that maybe you'll spend a little time and resources fostering culture and morale. What's in it for you? I get it, you want to know if the time and money you spend trying to get people to like other people and their environment is worth the cost. It's especially scary since we can't have a metric like "Percent Morale Increase per Person per Square Foot" or some weird thing like that.
It's easy to be discouraged by people in a workplace taking the attitude that team building is a waste of time. Quite frankly, that's an individual choice they have to make and some people genuinely don't want to participate outside of the bare minimum. That's ok. For the rest of the team that wants to buy in, it'll get recognized. Is every attempt to inspire team building and foster a culture of super happy fun times going to be a home run? Probably not.
HOWEVER
You tried. And there are many people across every industry that have seen companies not even try. To try is to show people they are valued. It shows they have a purpose beyond just their job duties for being there. It inspires those who want to see a sustained effort in this arena to come together in camaraderie. It shows you exhibit and understand those three key elements. Get that snowball rolling and it will begin to grow.
Is the efficiency of your team going to be 100% in a workplace with high morale? It's unlikely, but it will almost certainly be higher than a place that has low morale regardless of the targets you set for your team. The people of your business, if high morale is present, will be more willing to go the extra mile not just for you but for those around them. It means less staff turnover due to job hopping, less stress and burnout, stronger collaboration between team members, and a better overall atmosphere in the place you work.
Or you could come into the office and hide until someone knocks on your door to complain because someone didn't replace the printer paper. Low morale sucks.
But hey, it's your choice whether that sounds like it's worth the investment.
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Morale of the story
Company culture is something that needs to be nurtured by all. It requires buy in from management down to the people on the front lines. To create good morale is to tap into this culture and feed it. This will be different from team to team, but the benefits of cracking the code are well worth the effort. In a day and age where working from home is more viable an option than ever before, you are competing against the idea of a person working from the comfort of their house. To successfully create an environment that compete with that in any way can be thought of as commendable.
Not everything needs to be measured. Number crunching, statistics, and precision are all good things to have, but they are uniquely 21st century metrics, especially on the scale we use them today. People are not machines and they do not simply exist in a workplace to fill a row in a spreadsheet. Machines in the workplace do not care about environment; If that's what suits your business better, buy machines. People want experiences, even if it means those experiences have to happen while on the clock. We all have a stake in ensuring we make those experiences good ones.
~IR
Does your workplace have a positive workplace culture? What do you do at your business to drive team morale? Or maybe you just have a comment to add? Check out the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn page and let everyone know. Don't forget to follow or like the page for updates! And share this article if you feel others should give it a read!
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