Morale Management During Crisis
We have recently been put into a crisis without much preparation; our goal is to find strategies that aid in mitigating the effects of high stress on worker morale.
Herman, M., & Oliver, B. B. (2017). Coping With Crisis: Managing Employee Fear and Low Morale.
This article provides suggestions pertaining to how firms/organizations can cope with a crisis. It highlights the importance of tailoring your response to a crisis based on the circumstances surrounding said crisis. The article recommends that managers approach employees during times of crisis with understanding and discover ways to work to meet their needs in such a time. Additionally, the article provides an overview of what reactions are considered normal and offers advice on when people should seek professional help. The article advocates providing support for employees and offers tips on how to reinstate a sense of normalcy.
Cotton, P., & Hart, P. M. (2003). Occupational Wellbeing and Performance: A Review of Organisational Health Research. Australian Psychologist, 38(2), 118–127 https://doi.org/10.1080/00050060310001707117
This article uses theory-based research to address employee wellbeing, performance, and how employees respond to stress. Primarily, it focuses on “the stressors and strain approach” that has been used for over three decades to define and analyze stressors in the workplace. This is important towards our topic, managing morale in a crisis because it discusses broader ideas of how to manage morale in a company when workplace stressors are introduced. This is useful because this research can be used to extrapolate out to predict how to manage a workplace in the midst of a crisis.
Hayes, P. A. J., & Omodei, A. M. (2011). Managing Emergencies: Key Competencies for Incident Management Teams. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Organisational Psychology, 4(1). doi: 10.1375/ajop.4.1.1
Hayes’ and Omodei lay forth a framework of the key competencies required for Incident Management Teams. The study conducted here interviews 15 IMT personnel and asks them to identify the 12 key competencies important for incident response roles. While some of these competencies are somewhat specific to bushfire response teams, most are applicable to a more general incident response by a team. The study asks the personnel what competencies are present when an incident is properly managed, as well as what competencies are lacking when the incident lacks a proper response.
Huang, X., Sawaya, A., & Zipser, D. (2020). How China’s consumer companies managed through the COVID-19 crisis: A virtual roundtable. McKinsey Insights, N.PAG. R
This source is a recently published article that shares the experience that China-based executives had in managing their operations during the coronavirus crisis. Mckinsey Insights, the source of this information, held a virtual discussion with multiple executives to get answers on how exactly they handled their companies and their teams during this crisis. The executives were asked questions on the challenges they faced, their most impactful piece of actions taken during the outbreak, and were even asked what advice they would give to companies around the world battling the virus. Ultimately all executives agreed that it is important for companies to maintain the confidence in their employees to bring them even closer together and to further create digital communication with employees to involve them in any operational changes. Mainly protecting staff was heavily agreed upon as well, whether that be through safety measures or financially.
O’Brien, T. (2008). Substance over style: The myth of managing employee morale during tough economic times. Public Relations Tactics, 15(6), 17.
Tim O’Brien lays forth that many workers expect a company to give pep/morale-boosting measures. Employees can often rely too much on management to raise morale, rather than having their own focus on “productivity, performance, and quality of life”. By promoting employee focus on these three factors, morale might not be at an all-time high, but employees will at least have a “we’ll get through this” attitude. Directly addressing employees in a transparent manner, letting them know that they are in control of their own morale, is the approach to take according to this article.
Sommer, S. A., Howell, J. M., & Hadley, C. N. (2015). Keeping positive and building strength: The role of affect and team leadership in developing resilience during an organizational crisis. Group & Organization Management, 41, 172-202.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601115578027
In this article Sommer, Howell, and Hadley investigate how the resilience of individuals on a team can be influenced by the team leader’s behavior during times of crisis. The researchers conducted this study following a crisis stemming from a shortage of hospital beds in 2007-2008. Sommer and colleagues used a survey composed of questions that had participants rate the transactional/transformational style of their leaders, as well as questions that had them assess their personal positive affect, negative affect, and resilience. The researchers measured resilience, affect, and leadership in this study. They discovered that positive affect and resilience were positively correlated and that negative affect and resilience were negatively related. During times of crisis, transformational leadership was found to positively correlate with positive affect, and negatively relate to negative affect.
Waller, M. J., Zhike, L., & Pratten, R. (2014). Focusing on teams in crisis management education: An integration and simulation-based approach. Academy of Management
Learning & Education, 13, 208-221. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle2012.0337
In this article Waller, Zhike, and Pratten explore which specific crisis management team capabilities impact team effectiveness during times of crisis through the integration of existing research surrounding crisis management and team dynamics. The authors delve into two phases of crisis management: preparation/prevention and containing/damage. The article advocates for team situation awareness, transactive memory systems, and collective efficacy as capabilities needed during the preparation/prevention phase. Waller and colleagues recommend that crisis management teams be capable of coordinating their actions in a timely fashion, updating the team’s shared cognition with the addition of new information, and adapt to their situation.
Authors
Amrit Kular, Kate Brockhaus, Kaila Ward, Olivia White, Adam Zukowski