Countless factors combine to create a prosperous business, but one of the most overlooked is your team. It can be all too easy to become caught up in other areas of your company, such as the sales targets you want to meet, your latest marketing campaign, or whether to start introducing a different material to your production process to save costs.
These details could be vital to the success of your business, but they mean nothing if your team is not operating to the best of their abilities. To make sure you have the best team possible, there are several actions you can take. One is to improve your hiring process, while another is to train your team better.
However, another action that can move the needle considerably is team morale. Although it sounds rather vague and imprecise to refer to, it can make all the difference to the performance of your workforce.
After all, if your team are demotivated or confused, they will hardly give their all day in, day out.
To help you improve team morale within your business, here are three tips:
Help Make Your Employees Feel More Valued
One of the best actions you can take to improve morale within your team is to make everyone feel valued.
Human beings have an intrinsic desire to feel wanted and included within a pack. It taps into our natural desire to achieve safety and security and feel like a valuable part of a wider whole.
Your employees are no different. It only takes one person to feel ignored, lost, or confused about their role for these emotions to spread to others. Once this atmosphere has sunk in, it can be difficult to eradicate.
One way to make people more included is to occasionally offer them personalized recognition gifts. This will demonstrate that you understand and acknowledge everyone personally and appreciate them being part of your team.
Set Achievable Targets
Another great way to boost team morale within your enterprise is to make sure that everyone is working toward realistic and achievable targets.
Business leaders are often tempted to burden their workforce with ridiculously ambitious goals to improve motivation and spur them into action.
Although this does work to an extent, it must be paired with an innate understanding of what is feasible in each timeframe, especially concerning the size of your team and the tools they have at their disposal.
This can decrease team morale and lead to a drop in performance. People don’t like being forced into a corner without clearly understanding why they are being forced to reach these targets.
Instead, set challenging but realistic goals, and gradually increase their toughness as team confidence improves.
By working with – rather than against – your team, you will both raise morale and hit your targets more easily.
Delegate, Don’t Micromanage
Lastly, you need to delegate responsibility to the appropriate team members, and then trust them to get the job done properly. If you are tempted to stick your nose in, don’t. By trying to micromanage, you will instead demonstrate your lack of faith in your team, which will sap morale.
