Does Morale Even Matter?
(Yep)
As the founder of a company dedicated to boosting workplace happiness, it seems right to consider whether morale even matters.
Why bother creating an organization devoted to improving employee morale in the first place? Let’s start with a few requisite statistics to answer that question. According to Gallop, only 33% of workers in the U.S. report being “engaged” with their jobs. 50% report being “not engaged” and 17% say they’re “active disengaged.”
One report estimates this cost the U.S. lost productivity valued between $450 billion and $550 billion in past years. These are big scary numbers, but what do they mean?
Some Definitions
Before answering that, I first need to provide a few quick definitions. Employee morale can defined as a “description of the emotions, attitude, satisfaction, and overall outlook of employees during their time in a workplace environment.”
A couple of key words pop out in that definition — emotions, satisfaction, and outlook. In fact, morale often stands in for terms such as satisfaction, happiness, and contentment. A related buzzword is “employee engagement.”
Kevin Kruse, who writes on the topic, says employee engagement isn’t the same as happiness or satisfaction. Rather, engagement helps workers commit to their jobs in a way that makes them willing to go the extra mile. Such workers go beyond tasks related to their job descriptions. They volunteer for overtime, help coworkers, and generally work in the best interests of the organization and its customers. Engaged workers do all this without prompting.
Being a Good Citizen
This description lines up with what many workplace scholars call “organizational citizenship behavior.” They call workers who exhibit this behavior, quite simply, “enthusiastic.” No matter the term, the results are the same. Such workers show an emotional connection to their organizations.
When good things happen to their companies, workers with this emotional connection feel personal happiness. When bad things happen, they share the pain. Merely satisfied workers do their work without complaining, but stick to their job descriptions. They don’t feel or care that much about the ups and downs of their employer. Such workers have only a passing loyalty to their companies and need to be asked to perform tasks outside of their defined roles.
I don’t know about you, but I know what type of employee I would want on my team! Even more, there are some numbers to back up this idea. According to authors David Sirota, Louis Mischkind, and Michael Meltzer, enthusiastic employees can achieve up to a 75% drop in product defect rates. Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his book “The Human Equation,” cites the fact that companies who work to foster high employee commitment, a byproduct of engagement, can achieve productivity gains of around 30% to 40%.
Engagement, yes. What about morale?
These numbers matter, or at least should matter, to any business leader wanting to create a successful organization. But what about morale? Isn’t engagement what we want? Yes, but engagement is impossible to achieve without morale. Workers who don’t have their basic needs met within a company will not commit to that company. Such workers won’t exhibit signs of organizational citizenship behavior or employee engagement.
Think of morale as being the price of admission to enjoy all the benefits of an enthusiastic, engaged workforce. So yes, morale matters, a lot. Unfortunately, far too many companies miss this point and leave heaps of potential performance on the table. If only they took the time to care for the people side of their businesses! Such “non-people” companies may find themselves footnotes in the success stories of those who figure out that employees really do matter. That would kill morale a bit, wouldn’t it?
