This 10-Minute Morning Meeting Will Help Your Positive Employee Relations

Ten minutes. Six hundred seconds. The time it takes to unload the dishwasher or make your bed. It might not sound like long, but setting 10 minutes aside every morning to talk to your team can make a huge difference in your positive employee relations and seriously boost productivity. Research suggests that most people have an attention span of about 10 minutes, making 10 the magic number for a morning meeting. Anything longer and their minds will start to wander, so here's how to create your 10-minute morning meeting  - one that instantly improves your employee relations.

Keep it Casual

Your morning meeting is the perfect time to start off each workday with a lighthearted atmosphere. Keep things casual and don't be afraid of using some fun phrases or figures that will energize your team! Encourage your staff to bring their own coffee and snacks, don't bombard your team with complicated phrases or figures, and urge employees to get involved. If you want people involved in their work, then encourage them by giving space for discussion without putting too much pressure on those who might feel uncomfortable speaking up at first glance - everyone needs encouragement sometimes (even if they don’t know it). Your informal gathering provides an opportunity for fresh insights from every person there which can lead towards creative solutions.

Provide Feedback

Studies suggest that regular feedback spurs positive employee relations. During your morning meeting, heap praise on staff who excelled the previous day and encourage the rest of your team to follow in the footsteps of your top performers. Feedback gives staff an understanding of what's expected from them, something that drives better performance in the workplace. Research shows that 43 percent of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week, compared to only 18 percent of non-engaged employees.

Morning meetings are also a great time to request feedback. This can be a bit tricky since negativity can easily take over the conversation, so be sure to set expectations from your team. You can have your team come prepared with solutions for each their concerns so that encouragement and positivity overshadow the discussion at all times.

Celebrate Success

Some employers focus on the negatives -- staff who failed to meet sales targets, a decline in customers, falling profits -- but concentrating on the positives in your morning meeting can foster positive employee relationships. Recognition during your morning meeting is crucial regardless of your niche: celebrate when staff members meet goals, acknowledge those who have gone above and beyond, and thank your team for their support. The top reason why most people quit their jobs is because they feel underappreciated, and a huge 65 percent of the American workforce receive no recognition at work at all. Celebrating your employees is crucial to the success of your business, so be sure to incorporate employee recognition throughout your entire day - not just the morning meeting.

Recognize Personal Milestones

While some suggest that celebrating personal milestones -- like birthdays, work anniversaries and engagements -- at work impacts productivity, recognizing personal milestones shows how much you value your team. You might want to announce special events at the end of your meeting and hand out a note of gratitude. Don't forget to honor individual achievements, too. Appreciating staff who have raised money for charity or passed their driving test, for example, proves you care.

Involve Your Team

Delegating duties during your morning meeting us useful if a task requires a specialist skill or provides value to an employee. However, enabling staff to volunteer for new challenges can improve their self-esteem and motivate them to accomplish a new goal. Persuading team members to use their initiative boosts employee engagement, too - leading to positive employee relations.

It's important for managers to give their team members enough autonomy so that they can achieve goals on their own and take pride in doing good work. Managers should also make sure not every task goes through the whole office because this may result into apathy if people don't find any sense of fulfillment or attached value from what is being done within teams

Open the Floor

Every morning, practice good communication skills by asking your team to share any struggles or obstacles they faced the previous day. Then, invite your team to share their concerns with one another to solve problems. Any hurdles that your employees had to deal with can easily be transformed into powerful learning experiences that accelerate business growth. Poor communication can lead to low productivity and therefor reduce your positive employee relations. 

Stimulate Interaction

At your next 10-minute meeting, suggest employees share their breaks and lunch with each other to promote better interaction. Twenty-two percent of employees are less engaged because of conflicts in the workplace; encouraging staff to spend more time together can prevent any internal conflict within the office.

You'll only have time to cover the basics in your 10-minute morning meeting, but keeping things simple leads to a positive employee relations strategy. Instead of long, boring meetings, open the floor, involve your team, celebrate success, provide feedback and recognize important milestones.