Beat the Drag of Low Morale

It has often been said that if you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. But even jobs that bring great satisfaction are likely to have days or projects that call that wisdom into question. When a member of your team is struggling to remain positively engaged due to low morale, that can be a real problem. If that drifts like a cloud through a team, or even the whole organisation, that problem can become a crisis.

What are factors in poor workplace morale? Drs. Ben Hardy, Tanya Alcock, and Jon Malpass addressed this issue in a paper presented at the CIPD Applied Research Conference in 2016. According to their research, there are three principle domains to consider: Value, Future/Goal, and Interpersonal.

• Value: Staff are likely to be influenced by the degree to which they feel their contributions are valued by the organisation, as well as the value they perceive their work holds in relation to organisational goals or positive real-world effects.
• Future/Goal: Worker morale is also impacted by the ability to correlate one’s work with individual goals and collective organisational progress. Understandably, if it is difficult to observe direct results or changes arising from the work one is performing day in and day out, it becomes hard to muster genuine enthusiasm.
• Interpersonal: Relationships in the workplace are not just about how well people get along – although it is certainly desirable to have a many positive links as possible – but about fulfilling the intrinsic need for social belonging. When employees don’t feel like they are part of a group with a collective identity and purpose – when they don’t feel like part of a REAL team – morale suffers.

SoCo Escapes teambuilding activities don’t have the power to reform a workplace or to change systems and processes that are harming morale. But work published in Small Group Research reports that teambuilding “has a positive moderate effect across all team outcomes”.

To beat the drag of low morale, or to preserve the strong team you already have, contact SoCo Escapes to book an engaging teambuilding session.