How to improve employee morale when a pay freeze chills enthusiasm

The federal pay freeze for 2011 and 2012 is just another reminder of the difficult conditions that workers from the smallest fire district, to the largest federal agencies are experiencing, and much of the private industry is experiencing as well.

Study after study has told us that pay is only one part of job satisfaction. So what do managers do in the face of workers who feel overworked and often unappreciated? 

One thing that can help is to give employees easy to use tools that can take some of the drudgery and burden out of their work ­-- like chasing down paperwork -- so that they can use their time, skills and experience for the real job that needs to get done.

I was reminded about how much impact an ECM system can have on efficiency and employee moral while reading Ken Berlack's piece in InContext Magazine on child support payment work done by the Court Trustee's office in Johnson County, KS. The system meant workers were no longer putting clients on hold, or telling them to call back later, while they hunted down paper files that were cumbersome and sometimes incomplete. The trustee at the time said she didn't understand how the technology worked but she knew that it did. It allowed the staff to quit the busy work and focus on the real work. It improved the morale in an office of dedicated professionals who were overwhelmed by paperwork.