High workplace morale is associated with greater job satisfaction and less employee turnover. This may be worrying if you wouldn’t characterise your practice as having the greatest morale, but fortunately, it’s easy to turn things around. To help you out, we’ve identified 8 creative ways you can boost the morale of the staff members at your clinic.

1. Take Your Team Out for A Dinner

A team dinner offers the perfect opportunity to help staff members get to know each other better in a relaxed environment. We recommend you consider offering a quarterly dinner for bonding purposes. Just make sure you pick a restaurant more informal in nature so people feel their most comfortable.

2. Have a Theme Day

Theme days are a great way to get everyone in a lighthearted mood. For instance, at Foxwell Medical Centre, the team dress up on Halloween, bringing smiles to the faces of patients. You could try doing something similar or alternatively, implement a silly hat day, team sport day, or 80s day.  Themed days like these are fun, improve the spirit of everyone on the team, and cost nothing to implement, making them a morale boosting no-brainer. 

3. Point Out Success Stories

When someone goes above and beyond, recognise it. People like to know their hard work is noticed and appreciated. That said, you’ll want to avoid lavishing praise on people just for the sake of offering compliments. That type of behaviour comes off as insincere. Instead, give heartfelt compliments and appreciation to staff members who do exceptional work—people will thrive under this type of recognition.

4. Remember Every Birthday

Create a birthday tradition in your clinic. Your tradition might include bringing in cupcakes, passing around a card, or singing ‘Happy Birthday’. It’s not about how much money you spend on birthdays, but rather it’s about taking the time to simply stop and acknowledge the important days in the lives of those in your team.

5. Make Staff Aware of Their Importance

Another great way to boost morale is to let your staff know how important their jobs are. For instance, you might remind them that without their support, doctors couldn’t operate and patient care would suffer. When people lose sight of these things, morale declines. By keeping your employees reminded of why they do what they do and how their actions improve patient outcomes, you’re helping them maintain their motivation and positive outlook.

Along these same lines, make sure your team members are aware of typical career progression channels. This means making them aware of the opportunities for advancement and how that advancement typically occurs. This way people have a professional goal to work toward and spend less time questioning why they’re doing what they’re doing.

6. Delegate the Task, Not the Process

No one enjoys being micromanaged. To avoid doing so, tell your employees the results you’d like to see, rather than telling them how to achieve those results (unless a specific process is mandatory at your clinic). Having ownership over the process will not only increase your employees’ accountability, but it will also make them more interested in the task itself, leading to higher morale.

7. Remove Bad Apples

Unfortunately, it only takes one bad apple to create a toxic work environment. If one of those bad apples is employed at your clinic, we recommend you retrain them or consider letting them go. Even if they are high performing, their impact on the rest of the team may be so negative as to make them a liability, rather than an asset.

8. Ask for Feedback

Offer your staff the opportunity to offer feedback, either anonymously or in person. However, don’t just stop there. Nothing kills morale faster than offering good suggestions and having them ignored. Instead, use the information you receive to implement welcome changes around the office. When your employees see you’re trying to improve the working environment by taking onboard their ideas, their morale will naturally improve.