Improve morale and motivation among employees without increasing costs

Six measures I would suggest to improve morale and motivation among office employees without increasing costs substantially are

  1. introduce flex-time: this leads to various beneficial points for the employee - caring for sick family members, sleeping longer when the last day was a hard one or a great party with friends, finishing homework or even x-mas shopping without being stuck in the crowd are great examples for using flex-time.
  2. create good office space: Make sure that your employees get a great wooden desk, indirect lighting, a window that can be opened (preferable with a great view, but opening is a minimum - don’t care for the air conditioner). Of course all the ugly cubicles must be replaced with cosy 3-4 person offices. And the employees should have the choice on the colleagues they want to sit with. Then let the employees know that it is their office and desk and let them place in there whatever they desire - without getting stress with the - office standards police? ? might it be a sofa or a radio-set. Your employees have a chance to accept their workplace as a piece of themselves; after all they are spending a huge percentile of their life there.
  3. Create pleasant working conditions (part2): Make sure there is always enough water, coffee and tea available for free for your employees. Then they don?t spend time thinking about when and where to get it by themselves and can spend their break for what it’s meant to be - a break.
  4. respect holidays and breaks: employees are often giving their best and last bit of energy when they know that their holidays or breaks are accepted and that there will be no doubt that they can take it as long as their work result is OK. The obligatory reserve to confirm vacation requests months prior to their request is an absolute no-no from my point of view. If it is not possible to have the company up and running with one person being away for 2 weeks is unacceptable if you can plan for this situation for weeks or months. The alternative is probably sick leave.
  5. have interesting work: without having interesting, risky or challenging work your best employees will leave pretty soon. Make sure that most of the work that needs to be done is the interesting one. Beware of too much administrative overhead in your organization that could kill all the pleasure in working. Huge corporations usually have the biggest problem with this point. I believe this is one of the most important points for me.
  6. pay well: although this has a commercial factor as well - whatever you do for your employees - at last they work for earning money for living. And if their demands are not met by your payment, you have a problem. This is the most important hygiene factor in Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory from my point of view.

note: this is a small part of my business english holiday homework - I hope you enjoy reading it as well.