Whatever the reason, low morale reduces job satisfaction, makes life difficult and uncomfortable for everyone – especially managers - and ultimately damages productivity. Naturally, managers should be doing simple things on a continuing basis to prevent a morale problem developing. However, if low morale is evident in your organisation here’s how Strategy Improvers can assist.

• Circulate a short survey asking this question: “Please list  five things that you think are causing low morale”. Make it anonymous – all responses go directly to Strategy Improvers and people don’t have to put their name on the form. Keep this simple. Do not be tempted to use an 80-question tick box questionnaire.
• Analyse the responses to identify the main themes.
• Hold a series of 2-hour workshops with up to 12 people in each focussing on WHAT PEOPLE WANT DONE – no “whingathon”! The objective is to get people to think and come up with practical solutions.
• Prepare an action plan to be circulated to all and add this to the monthly meetings to track progress.

Q. Won’t this raise a whole bunch of unreasonable expectations?
A. No. There may be one or two but most people know deep down that we can’t have everything. Management has the right to say no – and give reasons.

Q. What kinds of issues normally come out in the workshops?
A. Most people experience low morale when they feel they are prevented from doing a good professional job. They also hate having to do unnecessary, pointless jobs that could be avoid by good systems and procedures. If you can fix two or three big issues in this regard, morale goes up 80%. However, there are usually a number of small comfort niggles such as quality of food, broken windows in the toilet, noise, smells, poor telephone system and so on. These can be easily fixed