Boost Employee Morale: Scrap These 4 Things
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Four things I’d abolish at every company right now.
Four things that I think kill culture, morale, and impacting retention and productivity.
Let’s get straight to it…
1. Micromanaging employees.
Micromanaging sucks. Stop breathing down your employees necks and let them do their job. Also, the recent uptick in companies that have tracking software to track what folks are doing on their computers is alarming and insane.
You are a company, not a prison.
Hire people that are highly accountable and find other ways to measure people’s productivity.
I know that many leaders feel like if they’re not tracking their employees throughout the day, then what should they be doing? My answer: build culture, help your team, do anything else but micromanage. It’s not effective and it’s low-frequency leadership.
2. Not having a culture of feedback
People being afraid to give leaders feedback is a huge red flag because means that leaders either don’t ask for feedback, or react to feedback terribly (or both). In either case, this hurts culture.
I’ve said this a billion times, but feedback is the best way to build trust with your team and prove to employees that you care about them as a leader. It’s also how you as a leader can grow in your role.
Employees should feel confident that they are going to be heard and treated with respect when they give feedback to leaders. If your people to not feel comfortable coming to you as a leader with feedback, you need to change things up.
Leaders, ask for feedback and react well to it. It’s not about you and your ego. This is about supporting your team, being a valuable leader, and helping yourself & others to grow in their roles at the company. Learn to practice regularly asking for feedback and receiving it well until it’s second nature to you and your team. It’s a must-have.
3. “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
This is the worst reason to keep doing anything in business is simply because you already do it that way. Who cares if this is the way things have always been done?
Sure, maybe this system in place made you successful, but if you aren’t changing and evolving, eventually you will be left behind by other companies, technology, great talent, and the future.
Another element of this is that companies have to have meaningful conversations about change and improve their people’s skill and acceptance level of it. Train people, help shift their mindsets, and leaders have to model that “ever-forward” mindset.
It’s important for every company to ask:
“If we started this organization today, based on everything we know, is this still the way we’d do things?”
If the answer to that question is no, then improve, evolve, and stop doing things the ‘old way’.
4. Denying time off requests
This one seems like low hanging fruit to me; let people have time off.
Of course, in some situations like service or manufacturing industries, there may not always be someone available to cover a shift or fill in for the person if they want to take a Friday off for a concert or to head out to go camping, or any other reason.
Saying yes to time off is an easy thing for leaders to do that has such a great impact. It can prevent burnout in your employees and help them feel more satisfied with their work-life balance. It improves retention, goodwill, and loyalty.
The most important thing in your employees lives is not working for your company. You have to acknowledge this and let folks live their lives. When you let folks have a life outside of work, they notice the goodwill that you extend to them. They come back refreshed and feeling like their company is flexible and cares about them as a human. And in return, people work harder, they care more, and they try harder.
If someone wants a day off and the shift can be filled, say yes.
Related Articles:
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop