Early in my working career, a venerable mentor told me, “If you think there is a problem, there is a problem until you either resolve it or decide, with new information, that it is not a problem. Your job now is to pull up your socks and get to work.”
“I think we may have a morale problem. If we do, we need to find out how bad it is and do something about it.” Check the echoes of conversations in any work place and you will hear these words spoken at different times and in a variety of voices. It is a rare work place that does not have a residual of these echoes describing low points of organizational morale. Typically, the evaluation of morale is a second- or third-hand observation of a workplace environment triggered by a sense of a generalized feeling of workplace malaise. Verbal and body language clues may indicate that an undetermined number of people suffer from a prolonged negativity about their work or work environment. An indirect observation of a generalized feeling tone emanating from an undetermined number of people can result in this declaration. “We have a morale problem,” is not based on science; it is a perception of a perception.
Workplace morale is not the same as workplace output. Given the nature of the work, making widgets or providing a service or working on the creative edge, workplaces have measures of output or productivity. Workplaces set objective quantitative and qualitative goals for their products and services and construct metrics for measuring quantity and quality of work product. Morale is an entirely different animal because it is subjective. Finding a metric for measuring morale is parallel to considering a metric that measures love. You know it when you feel it but any effort to quantify or qualify love immediately runs afoul of what love is. So it is with morale. You know the “flavor of morale” when you sense it, but you cannot objectify it. And, morale may or may not be associated with workplace output. As much as we try to draw a linkage, high or low workplace output is not directly correlated with high or low workplace morale.
Morale is an inconstant human emotion of wellbeing. A person’s morale is a variable that rises and falls given environmental conditions. To violate the immeasurability of morale, consider a yardstick. Often, we push a yardstick vertically into fresh fallen snow to measure the depth of snow. We obtain a measured fact; five inches of snow fell within the last 24 hours. As a morale meter, view the middle of a horizontal yardstick, the 18-inch mark, as our morale neutral point. Higher numbers up to 36 indicate degrees of positive morale and lower numbers from 17 to zero indicate degrees of negative morale. If we hang our morale stick on the wall and watch it over time, we would expect normalcy to be a wavering of morale somewhere between 12 and 24 inches or rocking back and forward on either side of the mid-point. Like a barometer reading atmospheric pressures, morale changes, adjusts, re-centers and changes again and gives us a different measurement reading as wellbeing pressures are perceived. That is, if we could measure morale.
“We have a morale problem and need to do something about it,” leads to a question. What are the variables that affect workplace morale. To some extent, the variables may be as numerous as the number of employees, as each person may exude a differing degree of morale wellbeing. And, there are variables of morale wellbeing outside the organization’s control that enter the workplace. However, there are three solid concepts that affect morale, that are within an organizational reach, and that bear examination. These are engagement, respect and appreciation. These variables, unlike morale in general, can be quantified, qualified and measured. When they are on the positive end of the proverbial yardstick, each or all of these variables are associated with high morale. When each or all of these are not the negative end of the yardstick, they clearly are associated with low morale.
Daniel Pink writes in Drive (2009) that worker motivation is enhanced by three concepts of engagement. These are autonomy, mastery and purpose. He shows that workers who are positively motivated have a positive sense of well-being. Autonomy is the level of worker “self-determinism” in the work being done. Whereas, a traditional supervision of work leans toward worker conformity to routine processes, workers are better motivated when they participate in determining the schemes of their work effort. Additionally, workers are more motivated when they are provided continual training and education that leads them to be more skillful in their work. And, motivation increases when workers internalize the importance of their work. “We can affect worker autonomy.”
Engagement, whether as Pink describes it, or simply as the level of worker personal connection to the work being done, is an essential part of workplace morale. A response to “… we need to do something about it” can begin with an understanding of the degree to which workers exhibiting low morale are engaged and connected to their work. If barriers to engagement have been purposefully constructed or have arisen as unforeseen outcomes, begin to diminish those barriers. We can encourage engagement by listening to employees. Listening to their comments about their work, their complaints and their suggestions. Listening to how they “would like to see their work” managed. Listening to them as employees and as “people” we work with on a daily basis. Connecting engaged employees may mean accepting and adopting their recommendations. Real connections are made when employee contributions to work improvement is recognized and publicized. And, listening as a step toward engagement and connection is virtually a cost-free step toward moral improvement. On our morale yardstick, higher and positive morale measures are associated with the degree of worker engagement. “We can affect engagement.” “We can affect connections.”
Secondly, examine the degree of mutual respect exhibited by workers and supervisors toward each other. As Aretha Franklin sang of it in Otis Redding’s song, “Respect” means
“…R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB…”
Mutuality of respect is taking care of the people-side of business. The literature about organizational respect describes respect as a conditional and earned value and as an unconditional and granted value. Any discussion will teeter between respect being conditional or unconditional, but regardless of a discussion’s conclusion, values of mutually respectful behavior are essential for positive measurements of morale. Respect in the workplace is like the concept of connections, but it goes deeper into the worker well-being.
Environments of respect exhibit an open and mutual recognition of value. Openness is a public recognition; it is a declaration of how the work efforts of employees contributes to organizational success. Mutuality is the act of supervisors openly valuing workers and workers openly valuing supervisors. Too often, measurements of respect are unidirectional; they measure the degree to which workers perceive they are respected by supervisors. Respect in the workplace also must measure the degree to which supervisors perceive they are respected by workers. In truth, if there is no mutuality, there is no respect.
The concept of respect may be more easily observed in its absence. Disrespect often shows as interpersonal personal detachment and animosity verging on hostility. The flavor or the much characterized “water cooler” talk of a workplace indicates the presence of disrespect. Respect is openly portrayed while disrespect is a closed and oppositional behavior that works against both supervisors and workers.
On our morale yardstick, higher and positive morale measures are associated with the degree of mutual respect. “We can affect mutual respect.”
Lastly, appreciation is a necessary variable for positive workplace morale. Appreciation, or consideration, is the quid pro quo that exists between the organization and each working employee and is displayed in wages and salary and benefit programs. Pink writes that financial compensation is not an enduring motivator. A paycheck and employment benefits only meet the immediate and superficial elements of personal motivation, Pink says. However, time and experience have proved that if financial appreciation is not present on the first day of a person’s employment, that lack of appreciation will have a continuing negative affect of the employee’s morale. Appreciation matters.
Also, if appreciation and consideration are drastically altered for reasons unassociated with workplace effort, they can have a horrific effect upon worker morale. Political and economic policies have a direct impact upon appreciation and consideration. As a case in point, when Act 10 was passed in 2011, it initiated a multi-year effect upon the workplace morale of public employees in Wisconsin. State law effectively reduced worker wages and salaries and transferred the costs of specific benefits from the employer to the employee. Secondly, the Act legally ended the employees’ right to bargain for their employment’s compensation. In addition, the legislator’s annual funding of public education was slashed resulting in the loss of employment and educational programming. Subsequent state policy assured that these changes were continued each of the past six years. A result of this political manipulation is that a politically constrained level of worker appreciation has become the status quo and a constant damper upon workplace morale
Additionally, the political back story associated with Act 10 was that unionism in public employment was a direct cause of high state and local taxes. The back story went further in describing public employees as enjoying employment benefits that were uncommon for non-union workers and that the costs of these benefits were borne by all taxpayers in Wisconsin. The result was not just a financial restructuring of public employment; it also was a redefining of the way in which private employers and employees looked at public employees. Morale was sacrificed for political gain. Appreciation and consideration do matter. “We can affect appreciation and consideration.”
My mentor gave me two additional reminders about problem-solving. “Once you get your socks pulled up and get active in solving a problem, it is important to keep your socks up. Problem-solving opens may opportunities for time, people and circumstances to tug your socks down to your ankles and no one works well stumbling on his socks.” And, “Once you are comfortable with your socks pulled up, be ready to for the next problem. It awaits you.”