Why is employee happiness a critical success indicator for modern-day business?
“The pursuit of happiness is not the path to fulfillment, in fact, happiness should not be the goal at all. “
Not quite actually.
Polls conducted has drawn feedbacks and opinions of millions of people of what drives them, what excites them, and what makes them happy at work.
Today’s organizations need to adopt an employee-first mentality, meaning the well-being of the employee is integral to the mission and vision of the company. Leadership needs to recognise that creating a nurturing environment for employees is critical to long-term success.
Happy employees feel a sense of dignity and accomplishment in their work and enjoy what they do. These all give a sense of purpose and satisfaction which reduces stress and in turn positively impacts productivity and helps employees better align and achieve company goals.
Happy and engaged employees tend to miss less work, perform better, and support company innovation. When employees are happy, loyal, and engaged, company profits are much higher— and turnover is much lower.
What does employee contentment leads to?
1) Make Smarter Decisions At Work
It is widely surveyed, employees tend to make sounder decisions when they have less fear and anxiety. Employee morale can make a big difference in your workforce and the decisions they make. Stressed-out employees have a hard time focusing and may take more risks, while happy employees might make more educated and calculated decisions. As a team leader, you need to instill respect, admiration, and confidence in your team so they feel inspired and happy to do their job to the best of their abilities.
1) Are Less Likely to look outside of the company
Unhappy employees are far more likely to leave your company for a new position—often with your competitor. Employee retention is most certainly hit by unsupportive organizational culture and workspace. A high employee turnover puts undue stress on your business, as it ends up redirecting your resources and efforts to hiring new employees instead of focusing on your existing talent development and improving business operations.
2) Provide Better Customer Service
Employees with a healthier mindset and attitude will be more dedicated in customer service deliverance- as much as clients will much prefer dealing with employees having a positive attitude. When there is excellent customer experience, customer satisfaction grows, and you’ll be far more likely to make a sale—reducing client churn, improving client retention and revenues.
3) Are More Creative
Employees who are happy and satisfied are more motivated to innovate, put their creative thinking to use in generating unique ideas and inventions for business growth.
4) Make other colleagues happier too
Happiness is infectious. It spreads throughout your team and organization. It boosts overall employee bonding and camaraderie, and happiness will elevate the energy of your team!
5) Keep Employees’ morale high And Productive
You would think that handing out a raise or promotion is one way to keep employees happy, satisfied, and content at their jobs but it is only going to be short-lived.
Here are some of the most cost-effective methods to keep your employees feeling at their best at work:
1. Prioritize Work-Life Balance
Japanese work culture is notoriously known to be harsh. Did you hear of some horror stories? Thankfully, times have changed — in the present-day it is more nuanced. Work-life balance is huge when comes to employees’ happiness. It is very much an important role in today’s healthy work environment.
What is a work-life balance? It is the freedom to have balance and flexibility in the management of time spent between their work commitments and family and personal commitments.
By ensuring a great work-life balance for employees it reduces overall stress and help prevent burnout at work. Chronic stress is common at the workplace, if not dealt with could lead to physical consequences like digestive issues, chronic pain, and heart problems. It also pose a negative impact on mental health and can cause depression, insomnia, and heightened anxiety.
Burnout can be a serious issue for employers. Employees who experience burnout will often report fatigue, mood swings, irritability, and more. It isn’t to be taken as a joke! In fact, the psychological and physical effects of burnout in employees end up in billions of dollars of healthcare spendings every year.
Some tips to try out to keep burnouts at bay:
Flexible working options and environment is the future of work. Like allowing workers to work remotely some days, and utilize video conferencing for meetings to make everyone feel included no matter their location.
Encourage managers to measure progress in productivity and projects—instead of time spent in the office.
Management should encourage their leaders to take breaks and disconnect.
Conduct regular reviews of employees’ workloads and ask them about their management of the workload.
Give employees time to volunteer and give back to their community.
Reconsider time off/ annual leave policies to allow employees more time to unplug.
Increase support options for working parents for instance.
When employees can better balance their lives, they will be less stressed—and much happier.
2. Listening To Your Employees
More often leaders make decisions—and employees only hear about them after the fact when they cannot contribute to the process. When big decisions are made that affect the workforce without their input, employees tend to feel left out and forgotten. This, in turn, leads to overall unhappiness and a lack of motivation.
When considering how to build a positive work environment and keep employees happy, it’s important to listen to employees and ask for their feedback and suggestions. Managers and their behavior can make a big difference in how employees perceive their work. A recent study found that organizations that listened to and acted on employee feedback were 11 times more likely to have high retention rates.
Involve your employees in the decision making process early on, especially if the decision will impact them. These gestures will indicate to your staff that you value their input and their opinions—and makes them feel heard!
3. Create Career Progression
Employees need career progression in order to feel motivated, productive, and secure. It can be demoralising if employees feel as if they are striving for something when they have nowhere to go.
In many cases, employees are striving for their next promotion or pay raise to keep them going. But if that option isn’t available, employees would think that they do not need to try harder—anyway no one appreciates the work and it doesn’t benefit them tangibly. Instead of working toward hopes of moving up within your company, they will look elsewhere for that next opportunity. Would you be happy at a job with no career growth?
Career growth and upward mobility is ultimately what each employee values. It allows them the emotional freedom to take greater risks, pitch new ideas, ask for support and mentorship, work on their skills, and grow as employees and people.
How do people ask for growth opportunities? It comes down to creating a transparent culture at your office. Employees need clear direction on how they can seek out growth. They need to know that it’s available and open to them when they need it. Offering career growth opportunities is one of the best ways to keep people happy and looking forward to work each day.
4. Building A Positive Work Environment
Building a positive work environment can be tricky, but more than ever it’s crucial to build a work environment that excites employees! Positive work environments constantly come up as one of the most desirable factors for workers; a Deloitte study found that 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a positive corporate culture is key to a company’s success.
Albeit many factors are ingredients to constructing a positive work environment, but transparency and open dialogue remain key to ensuring that issues don’t stay bottled up and negative sentiments don’t thrive. It is key to building the type of workplace where people trust they can discuss anything.
Set aside time for workplace safety trainings and codes of conduct, to help them understand how the company functions. It is also vital to have a whistleblowing channel for greater transparency; it ensures people have a secure way to report any concerns—and have those discussions free from fear of reprisals.
Another easy way to make the workplace a positive environment? Smile more! Smiling is a sign of positivity, convey happiness and positive energy.
5. Recognize Employees For Their Hard Work And Reward Them
Saying “thank you” can go a long way. Managers may not always realize that recognition of an employees’ hard work or achievements doesn’t have to be a big, grand gesture. But big or small, recognizing employees for a job well done, for completing an important project plays a significant role in how employees perceive their workplace and feel about their work.
Employees feel accomplished and more confident when their managers and leadership praise their hard work and recognize the effort and time that went into their achievements. What are some ways it could be achieved?
Implement a reward such as monetary incentives for a sales target achieved.
Leaders to recognize employees for their work, regardless of the rank.
Hand out prizes at company celebrations.
Encourage managers to be generous at handing out positive feedback.
Use team meetings as a chance for everyone to recognize others on their team and “shout out” their good work such as ringing the bell or hitting the gong!
Start a peer recognition program like Nectar to create connection and appreciation across the organisation.
Hence having a transparent company culture is of utmost importance: so employees don’t feel the need to compete with each other, instead encourage and uplift each other.
6. Offer Extensive Benefits
Benefits are one of the most effective ways to keep employees happy. It’s a no-brainer: when employees feel their company takes care of them, it boosts their loyalty, motivation and performs better.
However, most companies don’t want to put any extra money or has a tight budget in implementing benefits, especially when they have just spent so much money and resources on hiring and training new employees.
Benefits can be a complex engineer. Communication with your employees is key to building a comprehensive benefits package that suits their needs. A simple and efficient way is to use office-wide surveys and feedback systems and so on.
For instance, do employees find parental leave the most important? Do they want academic pursuance or wellbeing benefits? You may never know until you hear from your workforce exactly how they feel. Depending on office demographics, the needs of your workforce varies greatly. There’s a chance you’re paying for an expensive benefit that no one really needs or uses.
Therefore it is crucial to consider inclusivity and 360 all-round employee wellbeing in order to meet their needs the most.
Post pandemic residual effects has resulted in economic doldrums and financial instability, many employees are increasingly beaten down by money worries. Friyay- Earned Wage Access is a financial wellness benefit in which employees could draw on their earned salaries in real time to bridge their daily cashflow gaps or emergencies, thereby lifting the top stress contributor in the workplace.
Whether it’s giving your employees the day off on their birthday, or that extra liquidity, it’s critical to truly listen and fulfilling employees’ needs. By that they will be much happier and work harder.
If you are interested in exploring how Friyay helps in your employees’ wellbeing, schedule a demo with us now https://friyay.asia/contact-us !
References
https://eugenechrinian.com/why-business-leaders-should-adopt-an-employee-first-mindset/ by E Chrinian | Jan 23, 2019
https://bossbabe.com/everyone-focuses-on-the-pursuit-of-happiness-do-this-instead/ BY Michelle Slote
https://www.hrmorning.com/news/listening-higher-retention/ by Renee Cocchi April 27, 2022
https://nectarhr.com/blog/employee-happiness-at-work#:~:text=Employee%20happiness%20is%20one%20of,and%20turnover%20is%20much%20lower By Lindsey Wilcox