How to Maintain Good Office Morale During COVID-19

Employees have been working from home since March and the return to working in the office will likely be met with excitement, energy, and high morale. This renewed energy will be good for your employees and may even signify unity within your business after the long time apart. How great would it be to return to the office and keep employees’ improved morale and high work engagement for the long-run?

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
As we have learned through the “working from home” period of the Covid-19 crisis, communication is undoubtedly important for healthy and productive work rhythms. With workplaces now beginning to re-open, the goal should be to continue that same open channel of communication as your employees come back to the office.

The “new normal” may be continuing the commitment of regularly updating your employees and customers, and continuing to embrace more directional and descriptive emails to teammates. However it manifests, people want to feel involved and in the loop. The more someone knows about a difficult situation beforehand, when the news is shared, there’s less felt stress. Keep that up in the office!

Inspire Your Employees
Work can oftentimes be tough and require a lot of resilience especially during the uncertain times of a pandemic. That uncertainty can manifest itself as the fear of job loss, fear of shutting down business, or the loss of customers. When a person is rooted in who they are, and they have an understanding that their work has value and makes a difference, they will be more likely to show resilience.

Workers may need help to elevate above hard circumstances and successfully do their part to continue to move the business forward. Inspire your people upon return by posting about your team on social media, treating them with casual wear days, or even offering a day or two of additional time off. Your employees will take notice of the ways they are treated and your company culture plays a big role in inspiration.

Strengthen Relationships
The foundation of healthy relationships is trust and respect. You trust your employees to lead projects and to take on other challenging assignments. This can help foster reliability within your office.

Considering your employees’ ideas and inputs is a great way to brainstorm solutions and to make them feel heard as we are now at a crossroads in carrying out business with the shifting demands brought by the pandemic. This current climate can foster more creativity, and your employees might even be eager to share their ideas!

When the time comes to make a decision about when to return your employees to office work, transparency should be a priority. Your external business practices reflect your internal business practices, and the goal should be to treat your internal customers well like your external ones.