5 Smart Ways to Boost Employee Morale

There is growing evidence that happy workers are productive workers. So, what do you need to do to make your own workers happy and productive? Somehow, you need some morale boosters to make your employees more productive. These here 5 tips will help. 

01. Flexible working options. Human beings need real freedom and privacy. Many tend to be more productive when they have both. With increasing improvement in technology, it becomes easier for professionals to work from home, or telecommute for portions of the day. More and more workers are buying into such loose arrangement and they are happier for it. It helps in morale boosting for such workers and companies and employers are not complaining for so long as productivity is not on the decline.

02. Continuous training. Many of today’s workers aren’t satisfied with just base qualifications. They want ongoing training and development to learn new skills and new concepts. Anywhere they get that, it helps morale because it makes them more valuable and helps to diversify their work experience so they don’t get bored or burned out very quickly. When you have a credible and beneficial training and retraining process in place, it helps to keep your employees engaged and gives them a reason to stick with your company for the long haul.

03. Decent remunerations. Of course this is a given. In this age and time, I very much doubt if anyone still expects people to work for free without adequate and decent remunerations. The better workers are remunerated, the better it serves their morale. Very directly too, productivity is also affected!

04. Growth potentials. Not very many workers like to associate with companies which have no credible growth potentials. The incentive is, if the company is growing, the workers grow with it. That no doubt is a morale booster for the workers.

05. Great working environment. Working in a cozy environment is a better morale booster than literally working in the dump. Even though changing times and changing technologies are fast affecting work environments and arrangements, the better a working environment is, the better it serves the morale of workers. Come to think of it, who wouldn’t want to work in a great environment?

5 Ways Collaboration Helps Your Small Business

Every small business owner always wants results, good results. That is why there is always an endless struggle to make the businesses more efficient, reputable and profitable. From experience, going it alone is at times very difficult but there is always a way around that which is simply by “collaboration.” Any small business owner who manages to engender a collaborative environment can drive better bottom line results. That is great! Here are 5 direct benefits small businesses can derive from collaborative efforts.

01. Access to More and Better Workers

Business collaboration makes available a wider potential pool of employees. You have available for use, outsourced workers, remote workers who may prefer their home environments to work for you and even part-time workers depending on your own business model. That arrangement gives you the flexibility to hire only persons who are best for the job, regardless of their locations. 

02. More Effective Communication

You may be aware that information is only valuable if it’s available to the right people at the right times. And, these are the people who can make use of that information for the sake of your business. Without a true collaboration system for your team, what happens is that your team gets to rely on regular communication methods like phone systems, text chat or email which could fragment such information. Fragmented information hurts your business real time but with systems collaboration, that problem can be resolved.

03. More Efficient Processes

Collaboration in the use of processes engenders efficiency by eliminating duplication of efforts. Duplication of efforts brews avoidable crisis and dissipation of energies resolving crises which would have been avoided in the first place. With crises, projects take longer to finish thereby making customers unhappy. But with better collaboration, employees and systems roles are better clarified leading to reduced crises and increased efficiency.

04. Better Customer Satisfaction

When systems work efficiently and employees stick with their roles, there is always better customer satisfaction. When friction is eliminated, your employees are happier and do give a better account of themselves in getting the work done. Naturally, that translates to better service for the satisfaction of customers. Employees’ collaboration engenders that and many small businesses can now take advantage of online collaboration tools to get things done in a better way.

05. Using Employee Strengths More Efficiently

No small business which is unable to tap into her employee strengths can ever be sufficiently productive. When project managers encourage their employees to work together on projects, they get the benefit of each person being able to work on activities that are most suited to their specific skills/strengths. That way, projects can be divided up more effectively based on proven skills. That is one great way to tap into employee strengths, a consequence of which a better and more effective job gets done. End result is improved productivity.