If they get negative in conversations, you have to perk up your ears. “People shouldn’t be constantly uncommunicative. “The biggest mistake you can make is to ignore the existence of a problem or rationalize it away,” he says. He keeps his ears open for the red flags that could signal trouble. Still, being able to identify a morale problem begins by being able to recognize situations that can bring people down, says Ben Holder.Īs vice president and CIO of Unifi, a Greensboro, N.C.-based textiles manufacturer, Holder makes it a point to meet with his staff on a daily basis to discuss all aspects of IT and its place in the company. 11 some companies have discovered that turnover has decreased as employees yearn for stability and security in their life. People are less likely to leave their position in the middle of a recession, when jobs are hard to find, and since Sept.
Some old signals, such as increased turnover and frequent absences, aren’t as reliable now as they once were. But on the plains, you can see a storm coming the warning signs of bad morale are more subtle and difficult to detect. Morale is like the weather on the plains?it can change drastically in the space of a minute. Here are steps tailored for an IT staff that you can take toward recognizing and rehabilitating low morale. There are, however, actions you can and must take to deal with and reverse a bad morale situation, including placing special emphasis on management basics such as communication, leadership and special programs for employees: training, rewards and recognition. No matter how open your culture, employees aren’t always comfortable talking to the CIO, and that means they may not tell the whole truth about how they feel if they do talk to you. The HR rep is also another person an employee can talk to. Having an HR representative participate in meetings can help make employees feel cared for by the company. While CIOs should not relegate responsibility for morale to HR, you can and should lean on HR for help. The CIO has to be the one who sets the tone and defines the IT culture in any organization.” “No competent CIO would leave morale for HR to deal with. “The CIO is the head of a community, a family of professionals,” he says. While morale may seem like the domain of HR, that’s a cop-out, says David Van De Voort, a principal consultant and leader of the IT workforce effectiveness group at Mercer. The second step is realizing that it’s your responsibility to make it better. The first step toward fixing bad morale is acknowledging that the problem exists. “It doesn’t matter what the economy is like.” “Lack of communication and bad management, or lack of confidence in management, are the two biggest causes of low morale,” says Rick Chapman, CIO and chief administrative officer at Kindred Healthcare in Louisville, Ky. If you ignore or underestimate that need, you’ll have a morale problem on your hands. In tough times such as these, the people you are responsible for are looking for support, leadership and reassurance. What you need to understand about morale is this: The mood of your employees can be brought down by external factors, such as the state of the economy, but it is your leadership skills?or lack thereof?that will tip the morale scales one way or the other.
LOW MORALE GEARCITY FREE
It can’t be fixed in one day or one week, and it won’t be solved by pizza parties, free mugs, or wacky Hawaiian shirt day.
LOW MORALE GEARCITY SOFTWARE
Morale isn’t like a buggy software program?there are no service packs or patches. There are no easy fixes or blanket solutions. They feel unappreciated because no one sees the creative effort and energy that goes into writing an application or completing a project.” And when IT staffers do receive feedback, LaRosee points out, it’s usually negative.īefore the problem of morale can be tackled, a couple of ground rules need to be understood. “IT leaders and workers tend to be introspective and technical in nature. “Right now, IT’s workload is increasing because of layoffs, but at the same time their energy is ebbing and they feel overloaded and confused,” says Dennis LaRosee, senior vice president of Praendex, a Wellesley, Mass.-based executive training and management consultancy. Those demands are magnified in IT departments, where maintaining morale can be singularly challenging.
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