For the more than half of employed Americans working from home during the pandemic, the sudden switch to remote work wasn’t without its challenges. From having to quickly get up to speed on remote technology to navigating a very new work-life balance, the transition has been anything but easy and overall employee morale reflects it.
In an August 2020 survey of 1,500 employees by FlexJobs and Mental Health America, 75% say they are experiencing burnout brought on by the pandemic. Their top reasons include a lack of separation between work and life, crushing workloads and worries about job security.
This is enough for employers to worry about their teams and step up by boosting employee morale. To improve the atmosphere, try implementing these creative methods from Lucy Leonard at Namely to your team.
1. Host Virtual Social Time
Set aside an hour of time once a quarter or month to virtually get together with your team. Beforehand, decide on an activity or plan of how the social time will go. A few creative ideas would be to have a virtual ice cream social; have everyone go out and buy their favorite ice cream and enjoy it all together online. You could do the same sort of activity with any food of your choosing.
You also could buy a craft for everyone to do and mail them to your employees. Have everyone complete the crafts online together and enjoy looking at your team’s masterpieces.
2. Dress Up Fridays
Whether it be fancy Friday, football team Friday or some other occasion your team enjoys, try implementing a dress up day every other week. Feel free to try once a week, but if you see a lack of participation creep in, reel it back to once every two weeks. The last thing you want to do is create more work or stress for your employees!
3. Create A Meme Channel
If your team uses a program like Slack or has some other sort of content outside of work, create a meme channel. Let this be a space where your employees post their favorite funny memes of the day. You could even implement a weekly vote on the best one!
4. Exercise Challenge
Have your team download a free app to count their steps and create a friendly competition. Exercise is a proven way to boost employee morale!
5. Virtual Trivia Night
You can try hosting a virtual trivia night for your team! Not only will this serve as an ice breaker, it encourages friendly distraction and discussion!
6. Care Packages
“We sent care packages to our employees’ homes to help them adjust to remote work. The care packages were tailored for each individual, and they included self-care items such as cozy socks, chocolate, herbal tea, craft kits, puzzles, books and board games. We also included some essential office supplies to ensure our employees have everything they need to work remotely.” – Stuart Cook, Marketing Manager at My Baggage.
7. Thank You Notes
“We keep employee morale high by sending out thank you notes to our employees who are currently working from home. It is a small token of appreciation, but our employees have expressed that they really appreciate the recognition.” – Darryl Smith, Founding Partner at Florida Car Accident Lawyer Team.
We know how important your employees are, so make sure that even during the hardest of times, that they do too. Not only will your team notice and appreciate your efforts in bringing them together, it will ultimately boost employee morale.
For more recommendations on increasing employee morale at work, check out these additional articles on our blog today!