What are the steps to improve employee morale?

Assume yourself as an HR Manager of a publishing house. You find that the morale of the employees is generally low. What steps would you take to improve employee morale? 
Answer: 
There are a number of measures which can be used to control the warning signals of low morale. The following are the positive measures to be taken to bring job satisfaction to the employees and reconcile individual interests with the interests of the organization. 

 

Steps to improve employee morale:

1. Creation of whole jobs:

Under this method, complete jobs are assigned to the employees. The complexity of a job should be increased so that it may appeal to their higher needs.

2. Job enrichment:

Job enrichment tries to deal with dissatisfaction by increasing job depth. Under this, individual employees may be given responsibility for setting their own work pace, for concerning their own errors, and/or for deciding on the best way to perform a particular task

3. Building responsibility into a job:

 Employees should be encouraged to participate and if possible be held responsible for taking decisions. Some delegation of responsibility from the manager to the employee could be useful in improving employee ownership

4. Managerial effectiveness:

This can be achieved by:
• Developing work groups;
 • Improving the social contacts of the employees- time away from work in team building and fun activities;
• Managerial coaching discussed above
• Employee stress management activities

5. Flexing working hours:

Flex time / work from home provisions allow employees to arrange their work hours to suit their personal needs and life-styles. This is particularly suited to situations with fluctuating workloads. Flex time employees are responsible for co-ordinating their functions with other employees and thereby have more responsibility and autonomy.

6. Rotation of jobs:

This reduces employee’s boredom which arises out of the monotonous nature of his work.

7. Incentive and Profit-sharing plans:

Morale can be improved by effective incentive and profit-sharing schemes. Incentive schemes are effective in improving workplace morale. They need to carefully designed (preferably by experts) well communicated and implemented to be effective. In addition to its economic aspects, profit-sharing has also psychological aspects relating to friendly move by the management in providing the employees an opportunity to participate in the profits. Morale can also be improved by adapting several other measures such as employee contest, special recognition and awards to long service employees and training the managers in how to manage people.