In a previous post, we discussed that when companies value and actively cultivate high employee morale, they tend to outperform their competition by 20%. Today, we’ll offer several tips and strategies on how to improve employee morale in your organization by first getting to know your employees better.
tumsasedgars / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Understand Yourself First
To know others well, first take the step of knowing yourself. Introspection is a key first step in helping to appreciate how others work, think, and feel. Consider what would make you a more satisfied employee. Identify ways in which you are motivated.
Compare your sources of satisfaction and motivation to others. How are they the same? How are they different? Being more introspective can help you become more perceptive of those around you.
Don’t Force Employees to Work Your Way
Taking time, through introspection, to understand yourself and to compare yourself to others will also yield a key insight that can help build better employee satisfaction: Others may not be the same as you!
How you prefer to work is your way—it may not be the way of others, and you shouldn’t force your ways upon them. Everyone has his or her own style and preferences. Whenever possible, focus more on desired outcomes than dictated ways of working.
Use Resources to Help You Understand Your Employees
Don’t just guess at how your employees think and like to work. Try using some of the many available resources out there to get a better idea. These could include personality types like the Myers-Briggs or other similar personality/skills evaluation tools.
Gaining a better understanding of employees and having conversations about individual styles and preferences can help to build a strong team and yield higher levels of overall employee satisfaction.
Be Approachable
Knowing employees on a personal level can obviously contribute to understanding their personalities and preferences. Being approachable can make them more comfortable opening up to you.
That approachability will open up lines of communication and ensure that you’re attuned to what’s really going on in the organization. It will also boost the odds that employees will be willing to share their ideas with you—ideas that can lead to organizational innovation and process improvements.
In our previous post, we discussed how important it is to maintain strong employee morale and discussed some data showing how high morale can help employers outperform their competition by 20%. For companies that want to achieve that kind of competitive edge, the tips here can help.