14 Creative Tactics to Boost Employee Morale

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Are you having a tough time keeping your employees or coworkers happy and motivated? Bad morale can not only make coming to work depressing, but also result in low production and sloppy work.

Here’s a list of ways to boost employee morale and bring some fun back to the workplace. These can be especially effective after layoffs or other traumatizing events at your office.

01) Staff Meeting Trivia Game

Buy a bunch of cheap prizes from a local dollar store and prepare a big list of trivia questions. Then start each staff meeting with a trivia question and award a prize to the first person to get the answer correct. It will help get everyone in a good mood, engaged and comfortable with speaking up during the rest of the meeting.

Goals:

• Boost employee morale
• Create a comfortable environment for communication

02) Company Color Days

Color theme a day and ask all employees to wear at least one clothing item of the selected color. Shirts, pants, pocket squares, socks, jewelry, etc. all count.

Theming your company color days around holidays and charity efforts can help increase the relevance behind this tactic. For example, having the entire company wear pink to help raise awareness for Breast Cancer Awareness Month can create content opportunities that help connect your company with a cause. Additionally, these photos can be great content for blog posts explaining the company’s efforts to support the charity.

Goals:

• Boost employee morale
• Create branded content for social sites, blogs
• Promote charity involvement

03) Paycheck ‘Thank You’ Notes

Have the boss write a personal note on the envelope of an employee’s next paycheck, bonus or expense check thanking them for their hard work and recent accomplishments. This personal touch connected with the check reinforces that even though the employees are paid to work, their hard work is greatly appreciated.

Goals:

• Boost employee morale
• Remind employees of what their contribution means to the company

04) Breakfast with the Boss

One of the biggest causes of low morale is when employees feel like they don’t have a voice at the company. Take one or more of your direct reports to breakfast on a regular basis and ask them to bring ideas on how they would improve or help solve problems facing the company. This one-on-one time will create a bond between staff members and help collect insights that can benefit the company.

Goals:

• Boost employee morale
• Collect new ideas
• Create an open and regular forum for communication

 

05) VIP Parking Spot For The Month

Usually, the best parking spots at a company are reserved for the executive team. What if one of these spots was used as a reward?

Goals:

• Boost employee morale

06) Massage Day

Hire a professional massage therapist to spend the day in your office with their massage chair (or table). Create a stack of ‘thank you coupons’ good for one 15-minute massage. Have the CEO walk around the office and hand out coupons to each employee.

Another optional twist is to add a hashtag to the coupon or signage to encourage your staff to talk about “Massage Day” at the office and share it on social media. Hashtags like #MassageDay are very popular on several social sites including Instagram and Twitter. Messaging could say something like “Monday is #MassageDay at @MethodShop. Thanks for all of the hard work. You deserve it”. When your employees share this content, they will help promote your corporate culture, drive recruitment interest and raise brand awareness for the company. It will also create additional content for the company to talk about in blog posts that can drive traffic to job postings.

Goals:

• Boost morale
• Social media conversation
• Brand awareness
• Recruitment
• Content creation

07) One-On-One Meetings

Employees have great ideas but may not have the right venue to voice them. Every employee should have a one-on-one meeting with their manager at least monthly. Make it company policy if you have to.

Goals:

• Give employees a voice
• Collect new ideas
• Create an open and regular forum for communication

08) Share Wall

Create a wall in the office where employees are encouraged to share ideas about products, your company or whatever you want.

Goals:

• Give employees a voice
• Collect new ideas

09) ‘Show & Tell’ Day

Have each employee bring an interesting item to work and display them all in a conference room or large meeting room. Employees should prepare a printout explaining the significance of the item and why they chose to share it with their coworkers.

Bonus: Display items without names and have employees guess who they below to.

Goals:

• Boost morale
• Social media conversation
• Brand awareness
• Recruitment

10) Thank You Cards

Provide managers with stacks of blank ‘thank you’ and encouragement cards. These cards are simple, cheap and are an easy way to communicate positive reinforcement to each other.

Goals:

• Boost morale
• Provide positive employee reinforcement

11) Free Food!

Food is a great motivator and has scientifically been proven to help uplift spirits. Order food for employees to help celebrate important achievements or occasions.

But make sure an announcement from a senior manager goes out to the staff telling them why the food was ordered. Skipping this simple announcement step will actually backfire your attempts to boost morale and help to create an environment complacency.

Here’s a sample email that you can send to the staff:

On behalf of the executive management team, we just wanted to let you all know how much we appreciate the hard work you put in PROJECT X! In celebration, please grab some of your coworkers and help yourselves to the bagel buffet in the kitchenette. Keep up the good work!

Goals:

• Boost morale
• Social media conversation

12) Musical Office Chairs

The concept behind this idea is to give your employees a change of scenery. Spending every day in the same chair, same cubicle, same room, same desk, etc. can get very stale. What if you got to spend a day in someone else’s office? Call a company staff meeting and have everyone write their name on a piece of paper and put it into a bowl. Take turns picking pieces of paper from the bowl. The name the employee selects is where they get to work the next day. Imagine the thrill of an intern sitting in the CEO’s office or the Chief Technology Officer working at the reception desk all day.

Goals:

• Boost employee morale
• Employee engagement
• Promote company culture via social media
• Bonus: This will also encourage everyone to clean up their workspace.

13) Company Walk

Organize a group company walk. It will promote fitness and help get your staff some fresh air and increase employee morale. If you work at an office complex, there might be a small park or lake nearby. For larger companies, organize at bigger parks.

Goals:

• Boost morale
• Social media conversation
• Group exercise

14) Themed Movie Marathons

Most modern office facilities now have wall-mounted TV screens everywhere. These screens often display repeating loops of everything from company announcements and live TV news to music videos and slideshows. But once in a while, these screens can be taken over for office Movie Marathons. The sound doesn’t even have to be on. Just queue up the movies on a computer using an app like iTunes or VLC Player and enjoy!

To make the marathons more topical or relevant, use specific dates like holidays, movie release days or actor’s birthdays to help make them fall on a workday.

Movie Marathon Ideas

Here are a few movie marathon event ideas and relevant dates:

Independence Day (July 4th): Happy birthday America! There are tons of July 4th or Independence Day themed movies. 10 of my favorites are listed below. Even with the sound off, these films all make great video wallpaper.

10 Independence Day Themed Movies:

1. Red Dawn
2. Yankee Doodle Dandy
3. Rocky
4. Johnny Tremain
5. Live Free or Die Hard
6. Drums Along the Mohawk
7. Born on the Fourth of July
8. Jaws
9. The Patriot
10. Independence Day

Star Wars Day (May 4th): The fan-created holiday was chosen for the easy pun on the catchphrase “May the Force be with you” — “May the Fourth be with you”. In 2015, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) celebrated Star Wars Day by watching Star Wars films. Next May 4th, why not have your employees join them?

Star Wars films in chronological story order:

• The Phantom Menace (1999)
• The Clone Wars (2008, Animated)
• Attack Of The Clones
• Revenge Of The Sith (2005)
• Rogue One (2016)
• A New Hope (1977)
• The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
• Return Of The Jedi (1983)
• The Force Awakens (2015)
• The Last Jedi (2017)

Indiana Jones Day (June 12th): The first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, was released on June 12, 1981. There are 4 films in the franchise. Combined they run about 8 hours or the duration of the average workday. The movies could all be played in sequence during the workday.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Temple of Doom
• The Last Crusade
• Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Expanding on the idea…

• Temple of Doom Buffet: Using the banquet scene from Temple of Doom as inspiration, ask each employee to bring in an item for a bizarre lunch buffet. Food items could just be creatively named or strategically use items like lychee nuts (eyeballs) to add a little shock.
• Indiana Jones Trivia Contest: Prepare a printed Indian Jones trivia quiz and hand out to all employees at the same time during lunch. Everyone has 5 mins to complete the quiz. The winner gets a piece of Indiana Jones memorabilia like one of the items below.