how do you improve morale in a unit?

Management that isn't above taking an assignment when needed. Even occasionally, when not needed, to keep skills fresh and to find out first hand what the problems on the unit really are.

Nurses that aren't above team work, with each other and with other staff. Don't walk past the kitchen to ask an aide to go there and get your patient a pitcher of water. I don't care what they told you in school about how you need to learn to delegate. Part of learning to delegate is learning when to do it yourself, to demonstrate to your staff that you aren't asking them to do anything you aren't willing to do, too. (Note the repeating theme.) Aides should know that when an RN asks them to do something, it is because they need to have it done, now, and correctly. We have RNs who will go out of their way to find an aide to do something that they could have done more quickly on their own, because they think that getting their license means they don't have to do certain things anymore.

Aides that hustle rather than hide. If you spend more time to walk up and down the unit complaining about how many complete baths you have to give, rather than getting busy doing the work, you need a new job. If you have to be asked more than twice to do something for one of my patients, there is a problem, and it is that management doesn't work enough shifts to know who the troublemakers really are and to get rid of them. There are nurses and aides on the list and everyone but the manager knows who really works and who hides out and makes more work for others.