While the world continues to turn during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, companies whose employees are continuing to work from home may find it difficult to feel optimistic amid mass layoffs and part-time placements affecting struggling businesses. Though working remotely has its perks (coffee while still in your pajamas, anyone?), it can potentially contribute to feelings of isolation and disconnection from employees’ former workplace culture. As a business owner, you should be aware that this can contribute to declining employee morale, hinders productivity, general engagement, and overall commitment to your company. When you strive to keep your employee’s morale high, you’ll find that they care about the continued success of your company. Here’s how to improve low employee morale remotely. 

Workplace Culture: Connect with Your Remote Employees

Before the coronavirus pandemic, employees were used to interacting with their coworkers over a cup of coffee or during lunch breaks. Additionally, meetings in person provided employees with an opportunity to banter and socialize over projects. The work-from-home environment has forced employees to create their own in-home office without any face-to-face time with their coworkers. Consider setting up daily or biweekly Zoom meetings to provide a guaranteed time for each department to connect and communicate with one another. Additionally, you can incorporate technology like Slack or Discord to enable text communication throughout the day between employees. This can help employees feel as though they are connected even while working from home. 

Acknowledge Achievements

Do you have an employee who was recently complemented by a client or scored the company a large contract? If so, acknowledge their achievements! Whether an employee is working from home or at the office, recognizing their contributions to the workplace can bolster their sense of belonging to your company. Incorporating this kind of employee recognition into your remote team environment doesn’t have to be a complicated step. You can opt to acknowledge your employee’s success during a meeting or through a Slack shoutout. If you’re looking to reward successful employees even further, you could even reward them with a bonus or gift card for a cup of coffee.

Ask for Anonymous Employee Feedback

Ask your employees for feedback on their current working conditions. By providing an anonymous forum where employees can freely express their compliments and concerns without fear of repercussions, you can help employees feel like their voice matters at your company and they’re being listened to. This forum can be available for employees to use whenever they need to reach out by implementing an anonymous survey that’s always available to provide feedback. This will give you the opportunity, as a boss, to make changes within your company to help boost your employee morale. 

About Lewis-Price & Associates Inc.

Lewis-Price & Associates, Inc., is a fast-growing mission solutions company supporting federal agencies through premiere training, program management and IT services. Serving federal agencies across the government spectrum, from defense to civilian, we ensure the success of ongoing federal agency operations through effective curriculum development, professional coaching, program management, and administrative and technical services. Lewis-Price is committed to providing high quality, effective and on-time solutions to partners and customers through a team that values integrity, intention and excellence in everything we do. Learn about how we can bring our unique approach to success to your organization today at lewisprice.com, and please follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.