Definition: Employee morale is the amount of satisfaction an employee has with his or her job and its current working conditions. It measures the motivation of an individual within the workplace.
What Does Employee Morale Mean?
Employee morale is a qualitative metric that has a big impact on productivity. A high level of morale increases productivity. Of course, there are other factors that might affect productivity, but high employee morale within an organization will help the company achieve better results. The way companies measure this might vary, but it is normally determined by using surveys and performance assessments in order to calculate the current level of satisfaction.
Each manager within the organization should work towards increasing their team morale and the organization top leadership should also aim to increase morale within workers to increase productivity. When low morale appears there should be an effort to identify the source of it and develop strategies to turn it around. Some key aspects that might affect morale are: compensation, work environment healthiness, job safety, career development opportunities, manager’s attitude, and training and knowledge-development opportunities, among others.
Example
Let’s say for example that Mrs. Jules is an Office Manager at a physician’s practice. She’s in charge of the regular day-to-day activities and currently oversees a team of ten people. Each of the staff members has different roles within the organization but she’s the one that issues the overall guidelines for all the business-related tasks. A few days ago the Head Physician told Mrs. Jules that he has to cut back some of the staff in order to keep the practice profitable. By doing this, Mrs. Jules predicts that employee morale will be reduced because of the negative reaction that this will generate on the staff.
She suggested the Head Physician that after performing this staff reduction, he should offer some additional incentives to the remaining employee’s to increase the morale within the organization and keep the work environment healthy and productive.
