As a manager, it’s vital that you understand the very important role of morale.
When a contemporary office environment has low morale, nothing good comes of it. Productivity falls, profits fall, and staff start to leave. It’s a very poor picture. However, when morale is high, everyone is happy, productivity is up, profits are improved, staff retention is high, and customers notice the difference in the quality of service they receive.
The good news is that ensuring an office has good morale isn’t that difficult. It’s really about ensuring that you treat your employees as people, you show them that they’re valued, you listen, and you ensure they have a comfortable and supportive working environment. Nobody wants to feel devalued or not taken seriously whilst they’re sitting for 7 or 8 hours at an office desk every day.
There are several things which can affect morale negativity. One of those is related to feedback.
There are always going to be times when managers need to give feedback or constructive criticism to employees. This might be one employee or the entire team. Nobody is going to get everything right, 100% of the time. There is always room for improvement and that means giving feedback on how to change things and reach those lofty highs of increased quality. The problem is, when you give feedback in the wrong way, it can easily affect morale. This starts with one employee and then filters down to the rest. They might talk between themselves, or it might be a case of giving feedback incorrectly to the whole team.
Low morale means less ideas around the modern boardroom tables, it means more mistakes, and it means a rather miserable office to work in. So, when you do need to give feedback, you need to use a very novel approach to ensure that the employee or team concerned doesn’t become upset or insulted by what you’ve had to say. This is the sandwich approach.
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The sandwich approach basically means that you start with the first layer of bread, and we’ll call it positivity. That means you need to open up the discussion with a positive remark, e.g. “I’d just like to say how impressed I was with your dedication to the project”. Then, you start to move into the filling, i.e. the problem or feedback. You move into this using a gentle approach - “I’m not sure what you think about this but perhaps we could try …” using the right type of language. Then you need to explain why. “The approach you started with has really got us off to a great start but I think we could push it further”, and then finish off your sandwich with another layer of positivity. “I really think this will help improve the project and I know you’ll do a great job”.
You can use this approach for any type of problem you have and it works wonderfully well. Using positives and negatives mixed together means that the negative isn’t the main focus. It’s drowned out by the positive but the negative is still prominent enough to be taken notice of because it was the main message. However, it all comes down to how you create it, so make sure your sandwich-making skills are up to scratch!
When you use this approach, the feedback is usually taken in the way it was intended. That means that morale will remain high, and could even improve thanks to the positive comments you’ve just dropped in there! When you fail to do this and simply focus on the negative, you’re at a far higher risk of morale damage.
Focus on making positive sandwiches out of slightly negative news and your office will remain the high morale place it’s always been!