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April Fools Day: Employee Morale and How to Kill it in 5 Easy Steps

Written by: Jennifer Loftus

Article Overview: For our first article in April, in recognition of April Fool’s Day, we’ve decided to make light of a serious topic. As an August 2008 Training Trends e-newsletter pointed out, there are “countless articles and books that promise to tell employers how to boost employee morale.” Why not take a shortcut from buying and reading all of those books and take a look at the top 5 ways to kill employee morale?

April Fools Day: Employee Morale and How to Kill it in 5 Easy Steps

5. Make Empty Promises

During orientation of new employees, empty promises are the first step in killing morale. There’s nothing worst than being disappointed. By providing these new employees with dreams of promotions and promises of better benefits in the future, morale will begin to drop soon after they realize their dream of a corner office will never be. Many employees leave perfectly good jobs because they feel as though they were mislead, or the job wasn’t as they thought it would be.

4. Promote Favoritism

One definite way to kill employee morale is to promote an environment of favoritism. By doing this, you are telling your employees that only a few will be successful… and it will be those whom upper management likes, regardless of actual job performance. Further, imagine the distraction to employee performance if they feel that their boss does not like them? Playing favorites is a surefire way to lower employee morale and performance.

3. Never Give Any Feedback

Performance reviews? Who needs them when you’re trying to drive employee morale into the ground? One article published by Entrepreneur magazine pointed out that in order for employee morale to be high, an employee need to know two things from their employer. One is what their employer expects from them on the job. The second is how well the employee is doing to meet the employer’s standards. Without this vital information an employee will either overwork into exhaustion or under perform. An organization without proper feedback will develop a culture of constant worry and uncertainty. By failing to provide such important information to employees, both upper management and HR members will be considered quite controlling!

2. Institute and Encourage Micromanagement

Leave no stone unturned. Nitpicking at every action an employee makes is a perfect way to lower morale at work. Not only does it demoralize and pressure employees, it also causes the employee to become distant. Employees will also lose confidence as you bombard them with commands and constantly looking over their shoulder. Further, they may lose confidence in the leadership HR is supposed to provide.

1. Devalue Your Employees

The number one way to destroy employee morale is to devalue the employees. Making workers feel as though they are replaceable will not only destroy what little morale they may have left, but it will also cause them to be disloyal. There is nothing worst than the feeling of inferiority. Further, by not giving praise and recognition to employees when it is rightly deserved, expect to effect an employee’s work production, too.

All kidding aside, no organization wants to have unmotivated employees with low morale. Not only does the entire organizational structure become unbalanced, the long-term damage may be irreparable. As HR professionals, it is our responsibility to promote healthy practices in regards to employees morale in order to create a more cohesive and successful organization.

If you’re looking to build a happy and progressive working environment, avoiding these 5 mistakes is the first step in becoming successful. In this day of economic confusion, organizations have to do all they can in order to keep the talent that keeps the organization strong.

Talent retention is a serious issue despite the economic downturn. Organizations are still hiring. The demand for key talent never goes away. In order to rise to the retention challenge, organizations are looking intently at human resource departments and how they deal proactively work to keep employees as motivated as possible when being bombarded with less than positive news through water cooler chat and the media. What has your organization done today to boost employee morale? What has your organization done today to kill employee morale?

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Article Tags: boss, confidence, distraction, employee morale, employee performance, empty promises, entrepreneur magazine, exhaustion, favoritism, feedback performance, hr members, important information, nitpicking, orientation, playing favorites, promotions, proper feedback, uncertainty, upper management, vital information



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