Growing a business comes with many pains, especially in the early stages. Creating business plans, finding customers, growing a team and making sure team productivity is high are all challenges that business owners will be familiar with.

These days, it is also getting harder to hire and retain employees. A 2022 study by Mercer revealed that one in two Singaporeans were planning to resign in the next six to 12 months. The main reasons cited for resignation were a lack of sufficient reward for their efforts, being overloaded at work and uncertainty due to lack of communication in changes related to the business.

The study also showed that 85% of Singaporeans were at risk of burnout this year. Burnout often manifests as lack of motivation for the job, avoidance or absenteeism and an overall drop in morale – all of which can result in drops in productivity, quality of work, and eventually resignation.

These results clearly demonstrate that businesses need to do more to boost employee morale if they are to retain their employees and help them be productive. While there is no silver bullet solution to this, businesses can leverage some simple SaaS solutions that make life easier for their workers. Here are 5 types of SaaS solutions that can help boost employee morale. 

1.  Mental health apps for teams and businesses

The pandemic saw a steep rise in the number of mental health apps and solutions for consumers. Many startups are also developing mental health apps and solutions catering to businesses to help their employees.

In Singapore for example, Intellect has been providing businesses with support solutions including self-guided programmes, health coaching and one-on-one consultations with psychologists.

Another similar app, Mindfi, allows employees to take guided exercises and team challenges to improve their mental well-being. Other popular apps such as Headspace and Calm are also offering versions customised for businesses and larger groups. Calm subscriptions for teams start at around US$58.37 per year for every user while Headspace costs around US$69.99 per year. You can even consider giving your team a free subscription as a nice gesture to show them that you care.

2.  Automation tools for repetitive tasks and manual workflows

In addition to their day-to-day roles and responsibilities, employees often have to spend time on certain essential administrative tasks. This could be anything from tracking customer orders and inventory in a logistics company or looking through media files and tagging content in a media firm. These tasks are often not the most satisfying or rewarding parts of an employee's work and could take up valuable time they could be spending on revenue-generating activities.

The good news is that most of these routine tasks can be automated with solutions such as Microsoft Power Apps which help automate manual workflows with custom apps created using minimal coding. By automating routine tasks, you can reduce workloads, save man hours and keep your team productive.

3. Cloud solutions that relieve the stress of backing up data

We all know how frustrating it can be when our laptops or mobile devices crash and we lose our unsaved work, be it files, folders or data. Now imagine how damaging it would be for a small business if a critical device or server fails and all the data inside it is lost without a backup.

Losing data such as project plans, artwork or vendor invoices can cause delays, downtime and drops in productivity until they are recreated, but losing more critical data such as customer files or intellectual property can cause serious irreversible damage to a business.

Employees who are aware of this may face some stress to back up their devices and data as frequently as they can. But they can be relieved of this task with backup solutions, such as Microsoft Office as part of the Microsoft 365 suite for businesses which comes with 1TB of storage space in the cloud. Singtel Cloud Backup and Recovery is another option which automatically consolidates backups while also protecting against cyberthreats by using encryption. No need for a large upfront investment either – being a SaaS solution, Singtel Cloud Backup and Recovery lets you pay only for what you use.

4. Apps for collaboration and casual conversations

Providing clear communication to employees and giving them tools to collaborate efficiently is now more important than ever. Lack of clear communication about company updates can create stress while gaps and inefficiencies in collaboration can lead to drop in productivity and team morale.

Businesses are spoilt for choice when it comes to SaaS apps for team communication and collaboration. Video conferencing solutions like the Singtel BizConference powered by Zoom and Microsoft Teams can help bring everyone together for quick syncs while Google Workspace and Microsoft Office allows team members to work together on documents in real time.

Messaging tools like Slack (and Teams as well) allow businesses to create separate “channels'' for different aspects of work such as company updates, individual projects, finance and admin. They can also be used to create channels for non-work conversations such as discussing lunch recommendations, scheduling coffee catchups and team bonding outings to inspire employees.

With a solution like Teams UC Direct Connect, businesses can bring all these together – video calls, conversations, file sharing – in one single platform, and even allow users to make and receive landline / PSTN phone calls using their Microsoft Teams app on multiple devices. 

5.  e-Learning solutions for continuous upskilling

One of the common sources of anxiety in employees is a lack of opportunity to learn and grow on the job. This is especially critical considering the pace of change in the business world today, adoption of new technologies and practices.

So another way to boost employee morale is to enable them to keep up with change by providing training, and opportunities to learn and make their career growth plans. There are a number of subscription-based services aimed at upskilling employees in the market today.

LinkedIn Learning is a popular one that has short and long courses on various topics from technology to marketing and design as well as personal branding. Individual users can sign up for LinkedIn Learning at US39.99 per month but customised plans are also available for teams if they sign up for a consultation. Tigerhall is another platform that gives users access to business leaders who share their personal stories, challenges, learnings and advice.