Boosting Employee Morale
By Monroe Porter

It seems like every motivational guru or author has a theory on motivating employees. After 30 years of consulting, I am convinced that none of those theories actually works.

The best employee morale plan is to hire the best people, pay people well, hold them accountable—and clearly communicate what is expected of them.

When I was 17 years old, I had a job in a grocery store. My boss was a “micro manager” and not well-liked. One day, the corporate office announced a safety and quality program. The “big boss” came by and delivered an empowering speech all about employee involvement. As a young and naive worker, I thought it was great. But all of my co-workers said it was just the latest idea of the month, and that nothing would change.

Well, they were right. Nothing changed.

The lesson? Improving employee morale is always about good communication and consistent practices. So here are some pointers you might want to consider as both a contractor and business professional:

• Job Descriptions: Start with a clear set of employee duties. Keep them simple and realistic. Use the duties in those descriptions to build a skill path for employee development.
• Feedback System: Establish an ongoing communication system for feeding back skill paths and career development results. Review where your employees are now, and where you would like them to go. Establish evaluations for both skill and pay. For skill development, communication must be ongoing and should formally occur as much as four times a year. Pay evaluations are usually a once-a-year event.
• Work Teams: Allow your employees to work in specific groups to help solve company issues. Such input need not be on re-engineering the company. In fact, simple projects, such as a better tool allocation system, equipment maintenance or job closeouts, are ideal. Employees are always more motivated when they are involved in the management process.
• Manage Consistently: Nothing is a bigger morale buster than being inconsistent with company work practices. Practice the hot stove rule: everyone is burned every time they touch a hot stove; it is immediate. They know they will be burned before they touch it, and it burns every time. Good management practices follow that same consistency.
• Integrity Pay: Make sure people are paid fairly and your system has integrity. Too many contractors hire based on their immediate needs, and wages are inconsistent. A simple test for this is to write down each employee’s name in order of importance. Who would you lay off last, next to last, etc.? Next, write his or her hourly pay rate next to each person’s name. If the two lists do not match, you have a problem.
• Avoid Bonuses and Gimmicks: Employees are employees, not owners. Too many people try to use some kind of productivity scheme to avoid managing people. Bonus systems may not work, and are often driven by the erroneous thought that your employees will do better because you pay them more. That is not always the case because employee performance is driven by skills, not just pay. The greatest benefit of a bonus or incentive system is that it forces measurement and accountability. These in turn help drive performance, not pay. You cannot pay an incentive or bonus unless you know the facts. Knowing and sharing those facts with employees is the key to your success. Again, this comes back to my basic point—communicate with your people.

In summary, your personality drives your business and culture. If you distrust people, paying them to be trustworthy will not work. If you are slack with people and do not hold them responsible, developing a phony motivational program will only create an illusion of success. It is also important to remember that all employees have personalities, and some will be motivated by what others find uninspiring.

So, how do you boost employee morale? Through constant communication and a steadfast culture.

Monroe Porter is President of PROOF Management Consultants and runs the PROSULT Networking groups for landscape and irrigation contractors. PROOF specializes in consulting and seminars for contractors. Monroe Porter can be reached at (800) 864-0284, or at Monroe@proofman.com.