Essentials of Measuring Team Morale

Whether you call it team morale or engagement, the fact of the matter is, your staff should be satisfied with their work life.

The reasoning is simple: Retention may be difficult, but replacing workers is expensive. United States employers spend $2.9 million per day to rehire workers. And the point is, as important as salary and benefits are to recruiting top talent, money isn’t everything when it comes to retention.

Employee morale is directly linked to engagement levels, and the higher your employees’ morale, the higher their productivity. Positive morale also decreases absenteeism and turnover and can even increase your revenue.

You may know the saying, what gets tracked gets measured. But before we can get to that point, we need to understand what team morale is and how it affects your workplace.

Fostering a work culture that boosts employee morale

Before we get into measuring morale, it can help to understand what makes a high engagement workplace. And the key concept is simple: Create an environment that your employees enjoy. A few areas you’ll want to optimize are:

• Collaboration
• Communication
• Feedback cycles
• Team alignment
• Professional development
• Salary and benefits

You’ll notice that salary and benefits make the list, but they are at the very bottom. That’s because while these two items are essential, supporting your employees in the workplace will be more impactful, especially if you are already paying industry standard rates.

To improve your work culture and thus morale and productivity, ask your employees what could be improved. They are on the ground day in and day out, so they are likely to know what tools aren’t working and where there are bottlenecks.

Once you start reworking the workplace strategy, you’ll want to take feedback regularly to ensure you are on the same track.

How does team morale impact your workplace?

For many companies, measuring morale can feel like a challenge. It’s common for managers to attempt to “read the room” throughout the year without making notes or communicating with their employees. And this is a significant mistake.

The long-term effects of positive company culture can increase revenue by 4x.

If you track your employee morale, you can better understand how you can keep levels high. To give you an idea of how much morale can affect the workplace, take a look at these statistics:

• Highly engaged employees can boost profits by 21%
• Employees with high morale show 41% lower absenteeism
• The long-term effects of positive company culture can increase revenue by 4x

In other words, high morale can reduce costs related to retention and absenteeism while driving up revenue and productivity.

How do you measure morale?

There are several ways to track employee morale. Right off the bat, you can engage employees with short 5-10 minute conversations to check the state of the workplace. But you’ll also want to get more thorough feedback in the long term.

You may decide to set up periodic group meetings or install a suggestion box. Larger organizations may want to appoint a person or committee in charge of monitoring and building morale.

Right off the bat, you can engage employees with short 5-10 minute conversations to check the state of the workplace. But you’ll also want to get more thorough feedback in the long term.

Regardless, you’ll need a few things to get started.

Use the right tools

While you’ll want to have face-to-face conversations, it can be helpful to have written surveys. But how should you distribute them?

You can give your employees print-outs with questions, but the problem with these is that they take a long time to complete and even longer to analyze. Conversely, you can send information via email, but that is hardly secure.

It’s better to choose a survey or feedback software to provide a streamlined process and analytics on the answers.

Ask the right questions

You’ll also want to ask your employees a set of concise questions. The list shouldn’t be too long. Furthermore, these surveys should not be anonymous. If you feel that your employees would prefer to remain unnamed, there may be an issue with trust in your organization — making this all the more important.

Some questions you’ll want to ask in your survey are:

• How clear are your expectations?
• Do you have what you need to complete your work efficiently?
• How often do you receive recognition or praise?
• Do you feel that you have the support to grow professionally?
• Do you feel that your opinions are taken into account?
• Do you have friends at work?
• Does the company mission match your values?
• In the last four to six months, have you discussed progress with your managers?
• Do you feel that you’ve had opportunities to grow and use your strengths?

Track KPIs

Outside of reviewing revenue or productivity fluctuations, you can track the number of KPIs to gauge employee engagement. These include:

• Employee Net Promoter Scores (NPS): This is basically the question, “How likely is it that you would recommend working at our company to a friend?”
• Turnover Rate: The lower your employee turnover, the more likely your team morale is high.
• Absenteeism: Similar to turnover, absenteeism can cost you thousands of dollars. If employees are regularly not showing up to work, you likely have an engagement problem.
• Promotion Rate: Employees love companies that offer a chance for advancement. If you have a higher promotion rate, employees are staying longer and are content at your organization.
• Employee advocacy online: Are your employees sharing company statuses and talking about work online? If not, you can also let them know this is an option and offer incentives.
• Company reviews: This is one of the most straightforward metrics to review, especially if employees are reviewing your organization on GlassDoor. You can use both positive and negative feedback to improve your workplace culture and operations.
• Feedback responses: Provide a platform for your employees to share their thoughts on the organization. The more people who respond and are open with their opinions, the more people who are engaged.

Start building team morale

Building morale is an ongoing process. But as we’ve seen, some of the most meaningful morale boosters are small, everyday activities. Even just checking up on your employees every week or recognizing their good work can keep your morale at a steady level.

And the best way to get started is to survey your employees and find out where you can improve. To get you started, we’ve put together a list of 7 employee survey templates that you can use today.