How to Improve and Maintain Positive Work Culture

Employees are and always be the best asset within any given company. Employee morale is important to both companies and employees because it increases productivity, allows for a creative and collaborative work environment and not maintaining morale can causes company productivity to crumble. The potential impact of a negative work culture can be extremely detrimental to maintaining a functioning and productive work environment. The phrase “one bad apple can spoil the bunch” is the most relevant here. Negativity can spread like a virus and if one of your employees has a negative mindset it can undoubtedly pass onto your top performing employees. This can decrease productivity for your entire team and cause everyone to look for things to blame for any perceived failures.

What Causes Low Employee Morale?

Working and staring at a screen for 8 hours a day without having a chance to catch up and interact with colleagues (the way you would on a normal day in the office while in the break room or on your way out to lunch). This will certainly lead to employee fatigue and eventually a decrease in both engagement and productivity. Morale is tied to employee satisfaction, productivity and engagement, without your employees will not be genuinely happy about their work environment.

The Best Way to Boost Morale

The best way to boost morale is dependent on management. Managers and business owners should work together to incentivize positive work culture by rewarding their staff with social gatherings, rewards, outings, etc. Moreover, they must lead by example! If you blame productivity on external factors, your staff will undoubtedly follow suit. Positivity is always a must from management! Since the pandemic, we’ve held weekly happy hours (where we play trivia, discuss favorite shows, or hold talent shows), hold daily virtual breaks (ice breakers are fun!), as well as set up discussion groups among employees where they can get together and discuss whatever is on their mind once a week.

How to Establish Positive Work

The most important cornerstone of positive work is that management does not pass the buck to employees they manage and maintain an internal locus of control. Meaning they do not blame external factors (outside of their control) for their successes or failures. It’s also important that management rewards or compliments their employees with a 10:1 ratio for every time they make a criticism. Individuals tend to remember negative reinforcement much more than positive reinforcement, so every time you make a criticism make sure you are also giving credit and validation to any employees 10 times over. Otherwise, it’s also vital to reward individuals outperforming and that make a positive impact on work culture. Activities are great to promoting positivity as well.

The key to employee engagement is a level of fulfillment and understanding in purpose. There is typically no better way to foster those feelings, than through interactions and storytelling among each other.