Four Ways to Boost Employee Morale and Improve Retention

A decent salary, periodic raises, paid vacation, healthcare benefits, and retirement plans are the primary motivators your company likely uses to keep employees productive and encourage them to keep working with you for the longer term. But do you consider other things your company should do to help promote positive employee morale and improve retention?

If not, 2023 should be a year in which you work on developing a workplace culture that fosters on-the-job satisfaction and boosts employee morale. Organizational research studies have demonstrated that employee morale is directly linked to productivity and turnover. Employees with low morale feel disengaged from their companies, making them less inclined to work hard and more likely to seek employment elsewhere. Conversely, high morale in the workplace is linked to increased productivity, efficiency, and employee retention.

Naples, Florida-based Moxxi Marketing understands the importance of promoting a positive workplace culture and offers you these five tips on creating a company culture that boosts employee morale and improves retention.

Keep Communications Flowing

If you’re not regularly communicating with your employees, you will not know how they are feeling. You have undoubtedly established clear responsibilities for each employee and probably monitor their work output, but you should also check in with them regularly to:

• Ensure they feel comfortable with their assigned tasks.
• Find out if they are facing any challenges.
• Make sure they are not getting bored.
• Assess how they are getting along with co-workers.
• Evaluate their overall job satisfaction.

Whether through scheduled one-on-one meetings or casual periodic conversation, make an effort to get feedback from employees on any changes they might like to see, whether with their own responsibilities or some other workplace issue. Additionally, keep your employees updated on the company’s overall success and any imminent changes. Conversely, be sure to inform them when the company is facing challenges.

Consistent efforts to keep communications flowing shows that you care about your employees and indicates that they are more than just a cog in the machine.

Recognize Employees for Their Good Work

While communicating with your employees, make sure that you let them know that you appreciate the work they do on behalf of the company. It would help if you also made an effort to publicly commend employees for their work whenever warranted. An often-cited Gallup study found that “workplace recognition motivates, provides a sense of accomplishment and makes employees feel valued for their work. Recognition not only boosts individual employee engagement, but it also has been found to increase productivity and loyalty to the company, leading to higher retention.”

Provide Employees with Innovative Incentives

The 17th Century proverb “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” suggests that people have long recognized that hard work needs to be tempered with a bit of fun or, at the least, occasional breaks from the workflow. Incentives that allow employees to engage in some fun time during the work week can also boost morale and help spur their creativity. While every company’s culture is different, here are some employee incentive ideas that might work for you:

• Breakfast treat—regularly or periodically, get your employees together to start your day by hosting an in-office breakfast.
• Lunch treat—Get your team together by scheduling regular or periodic out-of-office lunches.
• Bring your pet to work—whether regularly or on set days during the year, allow employees to bring their pets into the office.
• Gym membership or on-site fitness—exercise is good for the mind and can help ease day-to-day stress, so give your employees the incentive to get some.
• Office games—if you have a spare room, equip it with some games—ping pong, foosball, shuffleboard, etc.—that allow your employees to have a little fun during break time.
• Allow a late start to the workday—pick one workday per month that you can afford to let everyone come into the office later than usual. Your employees will appreciate having that extra time to use for either an R&R sleep-in or to take care of weekday chores.

As highlighted below, innovative incentives can also be part of your team-building initiatives.

Encourage Team Building Activities

Even if your employees have disparate responsibilities that do not require working closely together, they are still part of a greater team that drives company success. Therefore, you should regularly engage your employees in team-building activities or games. If you have enough employees, you can entice them to create a company-sponsored softball or other local sports league team. Absent that, here is a list of nine fun in-office team-building activities and games you can periodically use to boost your company’s teamwork.

Morale Boosting Efforts at Moxxi Marketing

Among the different morale-boosting initiatives described above, Moxxi Marketing emphasized team building and employee incentives in 2022. In addition to periodic breakfast bagel Friday meetings, the office hosted a pajama day, Halloween costume day, an after-work dinner party, and a holiday party at Ceremony Brewing.

Going forward, the company plans to expand these team-building efforts by scheduling an event every other week to get everyone together absent work pressure to focus on fun and camaraderie. Near-term plans include in-office events such as guessing games and trivia competitions and out-of-office ventures to go to the movies, Topgolf, rock climbing, and an escape room.

Boost Your Online Presence with Moxxi Marketing

Other than the above tips, there’s not much more we can offer to help boost your employees’ morale and improve retention. However, a new cutting-edge website and expanded online presence might help enhance their company pride. To learn more about how Moxxi Marketing can significantly boost your company’s online presence, contact us today at 239.330.6236.