How to Improve Staff Morale – 5 Essential Soft Skills

Soft skills are the human skills that determine how we engage and collaborate. According to a study by Business Communication Quarterly, the top 10 soft skills as perceived the most important by business executives are integrity, communication, courtesy, responsibility, social skills, positive attitude, professionalism, flexibility, teamwork, and work ethic. When businesses actively seek out employees with these skills, the message it sends to staff about your culture is profound.

Your corporate culture and the behaviours it rewards shows staff what is and isn’t acceptable. Seeking and encouraging skills that signal respect, teamwork and integrity tell your staff that the company culture places high value on trust and respect. By inference this tells staff that counter -productive and selfish behaviours such as bullying and harassment are not welcome.

The development of strong emotional intelligence by training and selective recruitment tells staff that their managers are trained to manage difficult situations and are actively involved in ensuring that staff are engaged.

Poor morale has serious commercial implications, affecting revenue, staff productivity and your relationships with customers and suppliers. These outward signals can be a sign that things are not right.

According to recruiters Robert Half, internal signs of flagging morale often include the following signs – increased levels of negativity to even small changes, an increase in rumour mill activity and the emergence of unsubstantiated theories for management decisions, a marked drop in initiative, increased missed deadlines, error levels and/or customer or supplier complaints. Each of these can serve as a warning.

It is critical to be sensitive to these changes and to quickly determine if the issue is isolated to a single employee or team or is more widespread. If relatively isolated, frank open discussions with the individuals or teams involved can identify the issues and point you to possible solutions. It is critical to ensure that the affected staff are part of the solution. Remember that no-one likes having things “done to them”.

Broad morale issues can often be the result of a perception that management are detached and unresponsive to the issues facing their staff on the ground. If the issue is more widespread, it is important to acknowledge the issue and again invite staff to be part of the solution.



This requires management to bring all of their soft skills to the process of re-engaging staff. If management are ill-equipped for the task, the process can be quickly undermined. Disgruntled staff are especially sensitive to any management process that is clumsily conducted - and can be quick to assign negative motives.

Hiring managers with solid soft skills and upskilling existing management is a good way of ensuring that you are always ready to deal with morale issues. More critically, the presence of a high EQ and soft skills management culture has a preventive effect as problems are more frequently identified and alleviated early - before they become widespread morale issues.

Need some new skills for managing morale? Book a FREE personal one-on-one soft skills assessment session, and find out how soft skills could benefit you or your workplace.