Morale Boosting
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—————————————————————————
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.
* In one firm, Halloween was a bit of a problem. Do we allow folks to come to work in costume? Should we encourage it or discourage it? I thought it would be a good way to get folks together and celebrate this “working holiday.” But many of the more conservative folks would be opposed to dressing up at all. What we did instead was borrow an idea — a Halloween Chili cook-off. Instructions about how to pull this off are on my website. Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait till you get back…
The result was that we had an event everyone participated in. Some were contestants, some came for a cheap lunch, and costumed folks planned a big entrance so everyone could see their outfits (and they put away the masks, live animals, and props until lunchtime — a productivity bonus!).
The Chili cook-off is now a tradition. Clients love being invited for the judging and no one goes out for lunch that day. It was especially hilarious when the land planners dressed up as sanitary waste engineers one year (nerd glasses with tape around the bridge, white shirts with pocket protectors), only to be bested when the sanitary waste engineers dressed up as land planners the following year (Hawaiian shirts, sandals and single earrings). Obviously the event is now part of the culture.
* A fellow was retiring, but continuing to work from our offices as a Disabled Veteran Enterprise. For his retirement lunch, we presented him with a gold-plated office key.
You are in a better position to judge what is an inside joke or meaningful incident than folks in the corner offices. Make sure you keep it friendly. Ridicule and sarcasm don’t help morale. I never started small, but that might feel safer for you.
Do you have a big win? Get a group together to brainstorm the ticks and habits of the winning project manager and have everyone dress up like them for a day. We did this for an instructor last year. The first few folks who arrived dressed like the instructor were pretty subtle. But when a whole group of folks were assembled, it was hilarious to see the variety of interpretations.
Watch your own comrades instead of television. They are hilarious situation comedies just waiting for someone to add a punch line.
Good luck!
Laura Ricci
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