Morale at Work

Joined
Dec 26, 2007
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Location
NC
Worker bee chiming in here...

I'm seeing a lot of low morale in my workplace, and from what I gather it seems to be pretty typical across other industries as well. I'm really curious what others are experiencing. We have a lot of good people heading for the door at my work. I'm struggling myself with lack of motivation due to increased workloads, no incentives (i.e. no bonuses/raises) and a generally ever increasing chaotic work environment.

Questions:
1. On a scale of 1-10 (1 low, 10 high), how is the current morale in your workplace?
2. Have you yourself considered leaving your current job, and why?
3. Have you considered changing industries completely?
4. What are you looking for in another job/industry, that you currently don't have at your current job?

edit:
5. What industry are you in?
 
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I think morale at my company is about an 8+ in general. Our CEO and HR are very active to instill a high morale culture to attract top talent. Autonomy, unlimited PTO, good salary with bonuses, monthly awards for jobs well done, only hiring people that we want to work with.

I'm pretty happy in my job with its salary to stress ratio. I could always do with more money and less stress but who couldn't.
 
I'll make this observation. When there are no repercussions for attendance during the pandemic, nor willingness to part ways with underperforming individuals, it puts emotional strain on those who are getting 'leaned on' too heavily right now.
 
morale typically very low. Not replacing people who quit/leave/fired

We hired 39 people only 3 made it 3 months and the jobs are not demanding
My job is only demanding because of being expected to do the work of 1.5-3 people everyday.
and extra work constantly dropping on my plate while others do 1/2 or less work.
Work has started not getting done.. and honestly I backed off a notch because I was killing myself to have extra work loaded on me... instead of others doing more.

An example typically we would have had 30 hours of labor on a weds.. last week 16 this week 20.. and of those 6 is a newbie who I do more work in an hour than his 6 hours.. so call it 15 hours (n)(n)

That will make morale low very fast.

I feel like this could turn into a rant.. so I will stop there.. but the stories I could tell :LOL: :LOL:
 
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The workplace is screwed up right now. My wife just got back from a meeting at her office of all branch employees with the 4 highest officers of the natural gas utility. The meeting was about the upcoming vax mandate. Emotions are running high and 16+ year employees said they'll quit before they'll get vaxxed. Others said they aren't against the vax but won't be told what to do and will quit. These are $30/hr jobs that will be almost impossible to replace in this area. The CEO said they have to follow the law whatever it ends up being. Being a utility with 1500 workers they have no choice. Wife thinks at this time 1/3 are vaxxed here. The vaxxed workers will never keep up. Emotions high, morale low. What a mess.

No political statement made or intended and please don't get the thread locked.
 
8
No
No
Less layers of upper bozo management
Healthcare industry

I work from home now, was blue collar for 20 years. I have very good boss and have seen the ups and downs of this business over 30 years. No job or career is perfect.


GMFan,

What industry are you working in ?
.
 
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5, yes, yes, engagement on a personal level.

Leadership is severely lacking in my place of employment. We've got people no natural leadership ability in the positions.

IMO, the reason is there is the stupid compensation system.

There is very little additional compensation between my worker bee level and my superior and the same the higher it goes.

The result is we get people that simply want a title, or the power. Ah the power!

Money is an excellent motivator....
 
I just think people are tired. Myself included.

Two weeks off a year isn't enough, and 40 hours a week is too much. It worked ok like 50 years ago when there were lots of people around to do the work. Companies valued employees and paid them handsomely, and the workload was reasonable. People also didn't need to battle as much traffic to get to work, and/or they could afford to live closer to work, etc, reducing time constraints compared to today.

Now, people are leaned on very heavily because companies are using less people to do the same amount of work. Those same people are not really getting raises (especially compared to the cost of living). There is no loyalty anymore, companies lay people off at the drop of a hat, and people leave companies to go somewhere else for 10% more pay.

I genuinely believe that if the standard was 3-4 weeks off, and 32-36 hours per week, people would be a lot better off mentally.
 
I just think people are tired. Myself included.

Two weeks off a year isn't enough, and 40 hours a week is too much. It worked ok like 50 years ago when there were lots of people around to do the work. Companies valued employees and paid them handsomely, and the workload was reasonable. People also didn't need to battle as much traffic to get to work, and/or they could afford to live closer to work, etc, reducing time constraints compared to today.

Now, people are leaned on very heavily because companies are using less people to do the same amount of work. Those same people are not really getting raises (especially compared to the cost of living). There is no loyalty anymore, companies lay people off at the drop of a hat, and people leave companies to go somewhere else for 10% more pay.

I genuinely believe that if the standard was 3-4 weeks off, and 32-36 hours per week, people would be a lot better off mentally.

Preach brother, preach. Especially when lately that carrot seems to be moving at 30mph and you're only able to run 15mph.
 
I feel like my current workplace is falling apart and has been for at least two months or so. They have cut everyone's pay which has caused many people to leave and others to be fired to cut costs more. Pretty much what my employer is seeking to accomplish is to get people to stay with the company while paying them as little as possible and also piling on responsibility to fill the void left by those who are no longer with the company. Many new hires have been brought on and they are of questionable quality as employees. But they are willing to work and stay with the company and as long as you are you have job security. You will not be paid well and there are no opportunities for advancement and more pay. You will be treated like :poop: and expected to take on far more responsibility than is worthwhile considering how much you are being paid. If you are a competent employee you will be relied upon by everyone, lots of hand holding and babysitting nowadays. If you area competent you will also have to continuously apologize for the screw ups of your co-workers to our customers and other co-workers but they're never held accountable because frankly we cannot afford to lose even the worst employees right now because that will just cause everyone else to have to assume more responsibility and probably lead to others leaving the company. A major problem we're having is that people in critical positions have figured out that if they simply don't want to show up to work they can just show up and work when they want and they will have no repercussions. Everything is so completely messed up at this place.

It seems like every day we're hearing about another high quality co-worker that is deciding to leave because they are tired of dealing with this BS. I put in my two weeks two weeks ago and have stayed on two additional weeks because HR at my new job has screwed up my onboarding and it has been pushed back two weeks now.

There is a superabundance of job openings in my area but finding ones that actually pay decent is where the difficulty comes in. I'm just hoping that everything works out well for me when I go in to close on my new job tomorrow so I can leave my current employer ASAP and move on to what will better suit my life and finances.
 
I just switched jobs to a new company in the flooring business.
I'm an estimator so I'm still doing the same thing.
I got a 30 % pay raise and my commute went from 42 miles round trip to 4.2 miles.
The old company gave 1 1/2 % pay raises and you had to ask for it and no bonus at all.
I dont know the new companies pay raise schedule but they do give quarterly bonus.
And as opposed to my last job no one here does any complaining at all,they are all happy.
So far I'm a happy camper.
 
Morale is pretty bad, especially with the younger guys. I do my best to steer them back on track. At least get them laughing and positive.

With 24yrs in, I do look around from time to time, but that's about it.

What's this 40hr thing all about? LOL I just finished eight 12hr shifts in a row. One was a 14.5hr, one was 13 given I worked when the clocks went back an hour.
 
Almost all companies / industries are going through more change now as compared to over the last 40 years.

Mandates, supply chain delivery issues, shortages of materials, labor, and soon working capital due to higher corporate taxes. Many other developed nations have lower standard hour work weeks. In France I think the standard work week is like 32 hours, and overtime is considered anything over 36 hours, and many workers can retire at age 52. Please don't misunderstand me, I am not a work culture expert, but maybe American business needs to look at what might work better for the times we are living in.

Workers are also quitting if they are being told to return to an office....even when they are proven to be more productive at home. That is just insanity.

Also many senior management people have never faced these kind of challenges or have ever lived through a downturn in the U.S. economy and thus are inexperienced in how to handle it.

Did you see that the mighty GE who was the conglomerates conglomerate is breaking up into 3 separate companies. It wasn't that long ago that they were the company of excellence, with all divisions performing flawlessly. Jack Welch is probably turning in his grave.
 
I am retired now and loving it. The company I worked for went into liquidation from over 100 employees to 6 and I think there are two accountants left and a jack of all trades gal. The company was a private student loan organization and I would rate the job a 9 or even 10. The employees were treated very well and nobody ever quit. Attitudes were good for the most part and everyone did their part. I retired in Oct 12 of this year and had a nice severance package too. I had my share of jobs that were unrewarding with negative co-workers. As soon as I could I would move on and sometimes it would take 3 different jobs to find a good keeper. In todays world a person needs to move on if there is another better job out there. Many times it's the upper management that is bad and not the actual job. It's amazing how a person can work in the same field at a different job with the same guidelines and be treated completely differently.
 
1. 4 A lot of things in play including so-so pay, so-so insurance, and return-to-office decisions that make no sense. The rationale is that apparently in the last employee survey, people said that they missed face-to-face interaction/collaboration, but many of the people who were told to return, including me who was already moved to full-time remote long before this started, don't actually *see* the people they're collaborating with even in the office because we're spread over multiple buildings in multiple states. Then again, these are the same people who expected us to believe that on a prior employee survey, people complained that, and I'm quoting here, we 'had too much PTO available' so the brain trust cut back our allocations...

2. Daily, sometimes multiple times a day. Mostly because I'm tired of being one of 3 people who have any clue on all of the processes we do, and one of those people has privately told me that she's retiring Q1 next year. This isn't a department full of rookies here either.

3. Not really. I've worked in several different industries and what I'm seeing is occurring in all of them.

4. I kind of hinted at what I'd look for in answer #2 - apparently I'm unreasonable expecting people who've been doing the job for as long as I have constantly needing correction or outright direction despite the fact that there are detailed, written instructions on what we do. Sadly, I started seeing this 'retain nothing/do nothing without having your hand held' trend start years ago so I don't know that there's anywhere I could go and find people who have even a slight clue. And it's really frustrating to say that because up until the mid-90's I can honestly say that most of the people I worked with were sharp and actually gave a 'darn' about getting things right the first time. There were some leakers too, but they weren't as prevalent as they are now

5. I'd rather not say.
 
Morale is terrible at my job right now. Raises are pretty much non-existent no matter how much you exceed expectations. Tried for a promotion which I was more than qualified for and instead it was given to someone whom I work circles around. Despite that person being given the job, I'm still basically doing the job anyway only for no extra pay. 2022 will be my 5th year with the company and I've decided that will be a make it or break it year for me. If theres no significant pay raise and or promotion by then, it is time to move on.
 
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