Minor things companies do to increase or decrease morale

In My Humble Opinion
1

I had a job at a different company once, and when new management came in they instituted a variety of changes that drastically reduced morale and seemed to do almost nothing for savings or productivity.

They abolished flex time, started micromanaging employees more, abolished eating at workstations, and some other stuff I"ve forgotten. A lot of people grumbled that it made it much more miserable to work there. I did not see any growth in production due to these changes, and you’d assume if people did take off that would have cost them thousands in lost talent and new training.

So it made me think about what minor things can employers do that either increase morale or deflate it. It seems like (perhaps this is obvious) HR and upper management sometimes pursue goals which sound good on paper to them, but do nothing but increase turnover and lower productivity. Its 2014 and I just figured that out, I’ll be here all night.

I guess I’m looking in part so I know what to look for in other jobs, as well as just for an intellectual exercise.

If you want to deflate morale and increase turnover the best things to do would likely have a hostile work environment full of assholes and bullies, micromanage people, penalize as many things as possible so people have to walk on eggshells, make the job boring as hell, tons of stress, shitty work/life balance, nothing but disrespect coming from management, treat employees like children who need constant discipline, rules and supervision, etc.

I’m assuming the opposite would create a good work environment. Flexible schedules, telecommuting opportunities, good coworkers, opportunities for vacation and time off, respectful management, being treated like an adult, novelty and challenge, etc.

As far as income, yes higher income helps but I don’t know to what degree income alone can make a job ‘good’. Higher income just makes it harder to quit a bad job.

2

This is a great point. A perpetually stressful and shitty job that you only stay at because it pays well is not a good thing.

I work for three things: money, recognition, and fun. I’m not optimistic enough to expect I’ll always have all three in spades, but I don’t think two out of three at any given moment is too much to ask.

3

The little stuff helps a lot more than it costs, in my experience. Free coffee, paper towels, and paper plates/plastic cutlery factor noticeably into higher morale at my current employer. It also doesn’t cost my boss a dime to regularly acknowledge that our job is hard and thankless. But it feels good to know that he doesn’t take us for granted.

4

Something I think can be a big moral booster that I am sure will get some disagreement here is clear and concise guidlines of what is expected of each employee as well as a clear path that will allow him or her to meet these expectations. A clear path to success is the best we can hope for on a job.

Free coffee, breaks, and clean orderly surroundings are nice as well.

5

Wow, did you work were I used to work. Exactly what happened. Many left to find other employment, the ones still there hate it. They now have a sweatshop type of environment.

Mgt. does not care about the cost of hiring, training, and retaining workers. They have started bringing in contractors as fast as they can get employees out the door. Contractors can only stay 12 months and then they have to leave.

I am now at a competitor and love the place for all the reason you listed as good things.

6

Simple, cheap things companies can do to boost morale:
[ul]
[li]Recognize people in a public way when a kudo is warranted. [/li][li]Respect one another as people (this is a two-way street between staff and management – each needs to take time to get to know one another as a person).[/li][li]Relaxed dress code. Unless you are in a customer-facing organization, no need to wear a tie.[/li][li]Flexible schedules (a lot of this one is dependent on the culture – management may be OK with it, but if you have co-workers who sneer at you when you come in later or leave earlier than them, then that can deflate morale).[/li][li]Clean and well-organized work spaces. Well-run and supported infrastructure (phones, computers, etc). Nothing worse than trying to get work done with a slow/broken system or with phone outages.[/li][li]Encourage colleague recognition with written thank-yous (copied to their boss). Everyone should do this for 1+ people once a week. Recognize people who do good work for you.[/li][li]Telecommuting - this one not always cheap – but definitely can improve morale.[/li][/ul]

IMHO, you cannot quantify being on a team with really good and smart people. I think a lot of people would rather have a good work environment over higher pay.

7

I concur with this. Annual performance appraisals, with a mid-year check-in, is a good way to discuss where everyone is. The worst thing to do is make annual reviews a mystery and a surprise.

8

If you’ve ever taken training on doing performance reviews, you’ll know the way to not make it a surprise is constant feedback during the year - positive and negative. Nothing worse for someone than getting good jobs all year then being told he is deficient at review time. Hard to fix a problem when you are unaware of it.

Another similar one is the feeling that managers review without knowing what someone does. Most places I’ve worked had people give a summary of what they did - in some they never got read.
Mgr: You get no raise because you should have done X.
Employee: I did do X. Here is the documentation. Which I gave to you before my review.
Mgr: Oh. Too late. Maybe next year.

9

Inconsistent micromanagement. My boss has no clear understanding of what my job entails, so usually leaves me alone. Occasionally he decides he needs to “help me out” by delegating work to my staff. He’s trying to keep my workload manageable, but it just gums things up. Trust me, I know what I’m doing!

10

If you’re going to recognize people, don’t do in an elementary school way. I don’t want a gold star on the board.

I am probably in a minority, but I don’t want to be rewarded with food all the time. I’m not a lab rat,

If you do have to take away a perk, such as free coffee, don’t lie about it and say the company is ‘going green.’ I’ll hate you more for being a liar when I’m accidentally copied on an email discussing the wine and cheese reception for company bigwigs.

11

I work for what I consider to be one of the best global oil and gas companies to work for. Morale will be different from country to country based on practices in the region, but here in the Canadian business unit morale is quite high. A few of the morale boosting practices here:

[ul]
[li]Every second Friday off, condensed workweek (37.5 hours). Core business hours of 9 to 3, where arrival and departure outside that is decided by the employee (as long as you put all your time in).[/li][li]Consideration of previous work experience when generating new hires salary/vacation package (i.e. I’ve been with the company for three years, but get vacation in line with my 13 years experience in industry, so four weeks).[/li][li]Employment tuition reimbursement, as long as it relates to the current role (they paid for my entire Masters program, around $23K).[/li][li]Annual bonus in line with business unit performance, long term incentive program.[/li][li]Recognition and Awards program that is very liberal. Each employee is granted ten annual ‘on the spot’ awards of $50 to give to peers whenever, for whatever, with no approval needed. Larger awards are given pretty liberally as well (I received a $1500 award two weeks ago for participating in a Lean Sigma project).[/li][li]Ability to give and receive anonymous feedback. It’s truly anonymous too.[/li][li]Annual performance and goal plans created between you and your supervisor that both of you are held accountable for, and are re-visited half way through the year to make sure everything is on track.[/li][li]The fact that behaviours are a mandatory metric on annual performance plans is significant. If you get feedback that your behaviour is not in line with the way this company expects people to act (respectfully, high morals, etc.), it will impact your bonus, and could (and has) led to termination.[/li][li]In our department, we have 40 hours of time per year to take training/attend seminars related to our roles, and a generous budget for the same (so includes travel and lodging if needed).[/li][li]Lots of opportunity to pursue activities additional to your job responsibilities. I just finished teaching a company/board of education sponsored course on my area of expertise to grades 10 - 12, all on company time and with the blessing of my supervisor. It’s awesome to be able to do things like this if you’re passionate about it.[/li][li]If you are ranked as a high performing employee, you can pretty much define your career plan ten years out and the company will help you get there. [/li][li]They aren’t bullshitting you when they say there is an option to work internationally if you are interested in it.[/li][/ul]

That’s all I can think of off-hand, but be assured I know I’m very lucky. I have certainly worked for companies that obviously do not value employees and morale was quite low.

12

A couple years ago my employer removed pop and candy bars from the vending machines, replacing them with diet pop and granola bars. This did not go over well. Just recently, non-diet pop and candy bars have made a return. This is widely viewed as a good thing.

13

Worked at a GIS data conversion shop that was going 24/7. Shift work. We took our caffeine seriously.

They took away our free (and mostly decent) coffee and installed one of those disgusting coffee vending machines. (This was before the ‘good’ ones) Guess they wanted a cut of the profits. Moral went right in the tank.

14

I read a story about Microsoft (this one, in fact) that talked about how, after the dot-com bubble crashed and stock options dried up, the company stopped providing complimentary towels for those using the company gym. The place went apeshit. Microsoft eventually threw in the … well, they gave people back their towels.

When it comes to morale, there’s no discounting the little things.

15

Whenever anybody takes time off, our manager asks around to see if anybody’s willing to work a day of overtime to make up for it. This is a zero-sum game… one person gets a day off, the other person works a 48 hour week and gets an extra day’s pay, which doesn’t seem worth it to me.

16

I work at a college and the two best morale boosters are:

A full week off between Christmas and New Year’s.

Summer hours: 8:00-4:15 M-Th, 8:00-noon on Friday. Every weekend seems like three days. Memorial Day seems like four.

The added benefit is that the college shuts down heating and cooling to a minimum during the time off and saved hundreds of thousands a year in costs.

17

My current list of demands and grievances:

• Don’t lie. Recently, I was told by a Big Boss that “We are trying as hard as we can to not let anyone go.” Two weeks later, a dozen people were laid off. Level with me. Give me time to be prepared in case it’s my head on the chopping block. Don’t lie so then it’s a shock and then I really hate you.

•Telecommuting. Should be standard unless absolutely necessary. This will prevent me from demanding free coffee or other little perqs. I am already a remote employee, but everyone should get to do it if they want to and the job allows it.

•I want a European work schedule: About 6 hours a day (32-35 hours a week), with a *really *long lunch (for appointments and naps and such). Standard 4-6 weeks vacation time for EVERYONE, paid. One full year of maternity or paternity leave for EVERYONE. Even the men.

• 100% fully paid medical coverage including dental and vision, psych, and a prescription plan. Or better yet, let’s divorce medical insurance from our employers and go single payer and then my stupid company will A) have a fatter profit margin and B) might compensate us better and C) will not have to fuss in their pretty little heads over it. And it’s a UK company, so they must be gobsmacked at the sheer number of dollars required to keep their American employees healthy.

•So we have a merit increase plan. You do an annual evaluation, get a raise. 1. We should not just now be setting goals in fucking JUNE, halfway through the year, for the whole year. That’s not an “annual” goal. It’s a six-month goal that I set once each year. We should be setting goals in JANUARY. Also, goals are not to be carried over into the next year, because we invariably adopt a new system each year.

•The merit pay structure leaves the employee with very little control over the amount of increase we get. 80% of the number is determined by factors we have no control over, such as the overall company financial goals. I have fuck-all to do with that. We have a bad year, that’s not my fault and I did what little I could, but I am not a revenue generator, nor do I cost the company that much. But I’m going to be penalized along with everyone else if some executives set unrealistic financial goals. 20% of my “merit” increase is actually driven by my performance. It should be the other way around because…

• There’s no incentive to perform above and beyond. In fact, it looks to me like a piss-poor personal economic decision. To get the highest rating on your eval, you basically have to work at least 60 hours a week, 20 of which are not on projects you’re directly assigned to, you have to do supervisory work without actually being compensated like a supervisor, and in short, you have to bust your ass. HARD.

So I asked my manager, “What is the difference between the percentage of increase you get if you earned the highest rating, vs what I got, which was a middle rating?” (that meant: does good solid work, but does not go out of her way to go above and beyond because she gives zero fucks). She confirmed my suspicions that I could increase productivity by orders of magnitude for maybe a half a percent more money. Which would come out to a few dollars a week. Work 20 extra hours for maybe $12 week? Oh, no, fuck that and fuck you and fuck the corporate world. I’d rather be a shitty team player and have a life after 5 pm. No interest in clawing my way up the stupid ladder if the end result is only worth pennies to my employer.

• Or. We can eliminate the whole salaried employee thing altogether and pay us all by the hour, including overtime. You want me to work more than 40 hours? I don’t work for free; make it happen. (Will not ever happen.) So, my biggest grievance is the expectation that, in order to excel, one must put in uncompensated overtime. And if you don’t, you’re a bad team player. That’s bullshit and it’s demoralizing.

18

99.99% of soda machines I have seen (I assume “pop” is some type of soda :D) have both regular and diet. At minimum, one slot is diet, usually Coke or Pepsi (e.g. Diet Mountain Dew is rare unless there is at least one more diet in there). I will drink both, but I see how this can seem very paternalistic. It isn’t an elementary school cafeteria!

It’s easier to give new things and looks good than to take away things, no matter how trivial. It seems petty to get mad about something like this when other companies don’t have it, but also it seems understandable that it suggests the company is/is going to cut corners in other ways.

I only halfway jest - I feel that 1-ply toilet paper is a clue that the company doesn’t care about you. And a switch would not be appreciated. Is downsizing coming next?

19

Every year my agency has a service awards ceremony. Selected employees are nominated for their involvement in important projects and then presented with a plaque in front of everyone.

Sounds like it would boost morale, right?

Well, no. Seems to me that people fall into two camps. People such as myself who don’t care. I show up for the cake, but couldn’t care less about the other stuff. And then the other people who do care about recognition, so get upset when they aren’t recognized. Or they get upset because John Smith the slacker gets recognized, but not John Doe–who busts his ass and does a great job.

Before this year, I was inclined to write this latter group off as a bunch of whiners. But this year, the awards sucked and I found myself feeling disillusioned. There was a team that got an award for their involvement in a short term project that wasn’t especially remarkable or extra laborious–and a couple of the guys on the team are notorious slackers. They’re the guys I see in the breakroom all the time while the rest of us are slaving away at our desks. And the other teams that were recognized weren’t that much better. Sure, they got to work on a special project and it was a success. But why should short-term projects of limited scope get special recognition over long-range projects and routine programs that are successfully implemented? Doesn’t that kind of team work deserve a mention as well?

Seems to me it would better for the agency to just give little tokens of thanks to individuals and teams that are doing good things, and do away with the fanfare.

20

1-ply TP, one can always deal with simply by using twice as much of it. Same with those gossamer-thin paper towels. But like you imply, if the company suddenly changes from using 2-ply to 1-ply, it portends that something more serious is coming.