1. Background

2. How to kill employee morale in
5 STEPS

3. Motivation
• Confidence
• Determination
• A feeling of certainty
• Interested
(Oxford Dictionary, 1994)

4. More about it
• Motivation is to provide a motive, so that a
person can act in that way.

5. Why we need morale/motivation
• If a person is motivated he will be more
productive
• Can it be vice versa
• If a person is more productive he will be more
motivated and high morale

6. The answer to our previous question
is…
• Yes
• “Productive people are happy people:
learning, development, achievement, and
success pave the path to high morale.”
– Rick Tate
Senior Managing Partner, Impact Achievement Group

7. Step 5
• Make Empty Promises
• During orientation of new employees, empty
promises are the first step in killing morale.
There’s nothing worst than being disappointed.
By providing these new employees with dreams
of promotions and promises of better benefits in
the future, moral will begin to drop soon after
they will realize their dream will never be. Many
of them leave good jobs because they feel as
though they were mislead, or the job wasn’t as
they thought it would be.

8. • Maslow (1954) described about the need
based theory of motivation, there are some
levels of needs,
• physiological (food, water, reproduction)
• safety (shelter, healthy work environment, money)
• belonging (social, friendship, affection)
• esteem (status recognition, positive regard)
• self actualization (desire for achievement, personal growth,
development, autonomy)

9. Step 4
• Promote Favoritism
• One definite way to kill employee morale is to
promote an environment of favoritism.
• By doing this you are telling your employee that
only few will be successful, and it will be those
whom upper management likes, regardless of the
actual job performance.
• Imagine the distraction to employee performance
if they feel that their bosses does not like them?
Paying favorites is the surefire way to lower
employee morale & performance

10. • Individuals are motivated when they perceive
that they are treated equitably in comparison
to others within the organization (Adams,
1963)

11. Step 3
• Never give any feedback
• Performance reviews? Who needs then when you
are trying to drive employee morale into the
ground
• Entrepreneurship Magazine: In order to keep high
the morale, employee needs to know 2 things:
– Expectation of the employer
– How well the employee doing to meet employer’s
standards
• Without this info he will either Overwork in
exhaustion or Under perform

12. • An organizaiton without the culture of
feedback will develop a culture of uncertainty
and worry

13. Step 2
• Encourage Micromanagement
• Leaving no stone unturned
• Nitpicking at every action is a perfect way to
lower morale of employee
• Not only it demoralize & pressurize him but also
causes the employee to become distant
• They will lose confident when you bombard them
with commands & constantly looking over their
shoulder

14. Control Freaks!
• By feeling less restricted and more
empowered, staff will be less stressed and
employee morale should remain high. In this
situation, the incentives you originally put
forward will have their desired effect and your
sales staff should become a more productive,
cohesive team.
2007 Mandy Leonard

15. Step 1
• Devalue your employees.
• Making workers feel that they are replaceable,
will not only destroy morale but also make
them disloyal
• Everyone needs respect and thus a employee
also needs it
• Remember the famous Quote: treat others
like you want yourself to be treated!