How to Keep up the Morale of Your Team in these Challenging Times

January 27, 2021 admin 0 Comments

When people say Coronavirus has changed the world forever, it is not an exaggeration. To top it off, no one can say for certain when it will leave us, letting the world go back to its pre-Corona time. Coronavirus has impacted the stock markets, businesses, industries and even workplace.

While in the last one year, many organizations have remodeled themselves to adapt to the changing times, the majority are still clueless when it comes to keeping the morale of their employees high. 

While many companies were resistant to the idea of their employees working from home pre-Corona, now that they are left with no other option – they are getting used to it. Even major tech companies such as Apple, Amazon and Microsoft had to ask their employees to work remotely. Schools have moved their physical classes to online classes, people shop online instead of visiting malls and workers are doing their jobs from the homes now.

“Be mindful. Think from your employees’ perspective.”

These unprecedented times have put everyone in a difficult condition, be it employees or employers. Employees who never permitted their employees to work from homes have now accepted this new reality. Employees have to simultaneously juggle between their personal and professional lives.

Keeping the retention rate high in your organization and keeping the morale of your employees high is very important in these trying times. If your employees don’t feel 100%, it will inevitably affect their work performance and eventually your company will suffer.

Here are five ways that you can use to help in effective management in Corona times: 

Five Ways to Keep the Morale High

Prioritize tasks

The first thing is the understand what is important and what is not. Being the manager or CEO of a company means identifying and labelling all the tasks according to your importance and priority. 

Once you have done that, see which tasks can be done later on and which tasks should be done right away. Give your employees a breather on things and tasks that are not required for now.

Take a look at everyone’s task lists and figure out if their schedules are too tight, leaving no room to relax. Always remember that these are challenging times also for your employees. Be mindful of that and don’t push trivial tasks.

Be calm

Employees unintentionally model the behaviors of their managers. If you are always panicking or in a bad mood, your employees will also naturally feel low. It is important to remain calm and manage your emotions in the right way. 

In many organizations, rumors about lay-offs, salary cuts circulate which can negatively impact the employees’ health and performance. If there is a problem, address it yourself. Keep the employees in the loop about what’s happening.

Have a direct communication channel with your employees. Conducting weekly meetings can be a good starting point for that where you educate employees about happenings in the company. Always remember that if you seem troubled, your employees will think there is a problem with company and their jobs are at risk.

Be flexible

The unpredictability of the current fiasco demands that employers show more flexibility towards their employees than ever before. While its true that your business always had a 9-5 timing and Corona has made it difficult to manage everything, you have to think from your employees’ perspective too. 

Instead of focusing on the timing, focus more towards the end-result. Are your employees delivering their tasks regardless of their work hours? If the answer to this question is ‘Yes’, then cut them some slack.

Be flexible when it comes to their work hours, if an employee works 8 hours but completes his tasks nevertheless, time does not matter. Unless their performance is suffering, do not be strict about the in and out timings.