Laura’s Winning Ideas

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by James Tate (jtate@madeupfirm.com) on Friday, April 29, 2005 at 12:30:40
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“I work for a mid-sized civil engineering firm. Our morale has diminished in the past two years, and HR and management have no clue how to jump start it again. How can we boost the morale of an office in such a drab industry?”
– James

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James, (all names have been changed)

I’ve been where you are.

IMHO, HR and senior management are pretty helpless to change morale for the good, though they can do a lot to change it toward the worst!

The culture of your firm is more in your hands than management wants you to know. You may want to start thinking creatively and listening for clues about what folks chatter about at work. See if you can’t build an “event” around an inside joke or interest of some part of the firm.

* Once, someone told a story about rock bands including nonsense clauses in their contracts, like having 5 lbs. of M&Ms with all the brown ones picked out. We had a primadonna project manager who didn’t like yellow. Several folks got together to sort M&Ms, removing the yellow ones. The batch was gift wrapped for the project manager when he won a big job, and the yellow ones were given as a gag gift to one of the folks on the team who had fought hard with this PM during the proposal writing. I’m not sure the PM got the double-entendre, but it was not lost on anyone else in the firm. (Read on …)