How do Corporate Cooking Classes Build Morale?

Team building and workplace morale are vital to increasing employee effectiveness in your workplace. A good team knows how to communicate and work together better than a team of people who don't know each other. As leadership and management, encouraging employees to bond and understand each other can be a great way to increase the success of your business.

But getting team members to bond and then increasing their morale can be more challenging than it initially seems. However, finding an activity that actually helps team members come together has just been made simple! Consider all the ways corporate cooking classes can be an excellent way to get your team morale up.

The Importance of Morale

What is morale? Morale is that feeling in your office of united purpose.

An office with high morale will have employees that understand why their work is vital to the inner workings of a company. They will clearly understand how they affect the rest of the business, and they will have confidence in the future of the company and their place in it.

When you run a business, you know that your personnel is the key to the business functioning properly and well. It's the employees' work, passion, and creativity that keep the business running smoothly and ensure that customers are satisfied. That's why it's so vital to consider your company's morale and how you can keep your employees satisfied at their jobs.

Without high morale, you can be facing a large variety of completely avoidable issues.

Low Morale Can Be Costly

Cultivating a good company culture, which includes morale, is vital to saving your business money. How is that?

When employees are unhappy, several situations will start to occur that will inhibit the workflow of your business. For one, absenteeism, as discussed in this EduCause review, starts to happen more frequently. This means that certain team members will begin pushing off their work onto others. This can create a feedback loop of dissatisfaction for the employee who feels unattached to their job. The dissatisfaction will extend to the others who have to pick up the slack, as well.

On top of this, when you have low morale, people are much less likely to take the extra steps to perform at a high level for your workplace. These kinds of extra steps are what take your business from good to great. But without high morale, an employee won't feel motivated enough to become exceptional.

What Causes Low Morale?

Not any single factor can be pointed at and blamed for low morale. It's created by a combination of factors that prevent people from feeling their best and eventually escalate into larger problems. However, some of these factors can include the following issues:

Don't Understand Purpose— Employees that don't understand the importance or purpose of their job are more likely to be dissatisfied. When someone feels underutilized or undertrained, they lose the motivation to work. This can also leave some employees longing for a promotion or for a different job entirely. They may also perform poorly while not understanding what their job really entails, to begin with, increasing anxiety.
Poor Leadership—Bad management can also play a huge role in lowering company morale. If the staff does not trust that management is there to help them, train them, and maintain standards, then they will often have less faith in the business overall and will have lower motivation levels during work.

The Benefits of High Morale and How to Achieve it

There are many benefits of having high workplace morale, as discussed in this paper by Southern Oregon University. Each of them brings the possibility of further growth and success to your business by empowering your employees. Some of these benefits include:

Higher Productivity—Employees that understand their jobs and the value behind their responsibilities find ways to work better.
Better Employee Retention—Employees that want to work better often feel more attached to their job and the work they do, as it feels valuable to them. When the business rewards positive growth, this creates loyal employees that can easily be reliably promoted. They should, in turn, continue to spread this attitude and help the business build employee growth with its success.
Improved Collaboration and Communication—When some employees have to pick up the slack of others who won't work, it can lead to communication deteriorating. When employees understand their responsibilities and management enforces them, your team will start working together better.
Save Capital—Did you know that better morale is correlated with better health? Have happier employees and worry less about sick leave.

If you have low morale, here are some things you can do to solve it!

Commit to Training and Proper Delegation—As leadership or management, you need to ensure that employees are trained to understand their jobs and consistently complete them.
Recognize Them—When your team does achieve something, reward them. Make their achievements feel acknowledged by the business. This makes them feel more valuable.
Spend Time Together—Taking time outside of work to bond with your staff can also increase morale by making them feel more connected and seen.

Great Cooking Classes for Team Building

While you're busy addressing the in-office factors that have decreased employee morale in your business or team, it's a good idea to spend some time with your staff in a non-work environment. Your staff is people, too, and finding out about them outside the work environment can help them feel more appreciated.

A fantastic way to get everyone out together is by participating in corporate cooking classes! These can be amazing team-building activities that don't just get your team working together and bonding. It can also give everyone real practical skills they can test at home and share with family.

There are many kinds of cooking courses available in the Boston area through Selfup! Learn about local New England food, authentic Japanese sushi, and how to cook healthier at home. There is a multitude of dishes and cuisine your office can finally become experts in with a handy cooking class.

An Italian Extravaganza

If all those options seem a bit overwhelming, consider a multi-course Italian meal may be just what you need to get everyone in the office on the same page. Start with a sheet of beautiful homemade pasta that you'll make together, and the relationship can start growing from there! Then you'll fill up that pasta to make wonderful little nuggets of ravioli and tortellini, with all kinds of fillings that can fit all individual lifestyles.

After that, enjoy the main course—a beautiful tiramisu! Equate the careful layering of ladyfingers with the core structure of your business or forget all that and just enjoy yourself with your close work relations.

Corporate Cooking Classes for the Win!

Why let all the essential benefits of team bonding blow right by you? When you optimize your team and increase team member motivation, your employees will become more effective at work with the right team bonding experiences.

If you need more team building in your workplace to improve interoffice communication, consider how corporate cooking classes may be the solution. Get everyone working and bonding together over a nice Italian meal. Or pick one of Selfup's many other cooking classes. Contact Selfup before booking if you have any questions, and get your team bonding over good food and shared joyful experiences!