Where does employee happiness rank on your organization’s list of priorities? If it’s not near the top, it may be time to rethink your approach.
Having a job you hate is worse for your mental health than being unemployed, found Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, 2023. It can impact employees’ home lives, and even their relationships.
Enjoying work makes such a big difference that over a third of employees would give up $5,000 per year in salary in exchange for feeling happier at work.
With so many employees feeling unsatisfied, improving employee satisfaction could help you retain your top talent and even save money.
So let’s take a deeper dive into employee happiness and why it matters.
Why does employee happiness matter?
Increased productivity
When employees are happy at work, they’re 12% more productive. That 12% can add up quickly to you staying at the front of the pack and being able to grow faster as a company.
More sales
How does a 37% increase in sales sound? Well, that’s the difference happy salespeople can make to your business.
It can also help you outperform your competition by up to a fifth.
Greater employee satisfaction
Engaged employees are less stressed, according to Gallup.
Employee happiness and satisfaction can impact the reviews you get on sites like Glassdoor, what employees say about you to their network, and your employer brand. This then has a ripple effect on the types of candidates and customers you attract.
Fewer sick days
Businesses lose $1 trillion per year in productivity because of employee mental health challenges. And a third of employees say that work negatively impacts their physical health, too.
On the flip side, happy employees take 10 times fewer sick days.
When we don’t want to be somewhere, it has a dramatic impact on our moods. Mental health conditions like depression and anxiety get worse.
And there’s a follow-on effect to physical health, including the exacerbation of chronic conditions like back pain. It can even reduce the effectiveness of our immune systems, making us more likely to get sick.
Improved retention
Hiring and training new employees gets expensive fast. It reduces how much time and money you have to spend elsewhere. And the more senior the employee gets, the more expensive and time-consuming it is to replace them.
On the other hand, if you boost employee happiness, people are less likely to leave, saving you money on hiring and training that you can spend elsewhere.
Ways to improve employee happiness
Boost your benefits package
Just 42% of employees feel happy with their employer’s benefits and rewards package. This shows a huge disconnect between what employees want and what businesses are providing.
Is it time to send a survey asking your team what you could do better?
Gather feedback
Poor management has a huge impact on customers, profits, and employee happiness.
Managers have a significant impact on the atmosphere at work. Do they create somewhere employees feel supported and valued?
Or do they take credit for employees’ ideas and make them dread starting the workday?
It’s important that employees can share with HR how they feel about their manager and colleagues. It’s only through their ability to do so that things can change for the better.
Encourage workplace friendships
When employees have close workplace friendships, it boosts their job satisfaction by 50%. Spending time with people we enjoy has huge benefits for our mental health, so this should come as no surprise.
If you want to encourage your employees to connect, why not set up ERGs? Or find a better way to manage them and get more from them? Book your free Workrowd demo today to discover how we can help you do just that.
Build a diverse company
Diverse businesses perform better and have greater employee happiness.
We all want to work somewhere we belong and feel psychologically safe. This is more likely to happen in a company that’s diverse, because it has a broader range of ideas and shows a willingness to listen to all of them. Meaning employees feel less isolated.
Support remote work
There’s been a mass return to the office over the last year or so. And it’s like we didn’t learn anything from the pandemic.
If you truly want to be an inclusive business, you need to support remote—or at the very least, hybrid—work.
There are some people who could be great at a role but are unable to fulfill it because they can’t afford to travel, are a primary caregiver, or have a disability.
One of the reasons I left a full-time, office-based role was because the hour-long commute, on top of being in a bright, noisy office environment, made my chronic pain and fatigue worse. The more I forced myself to conform to the norm, the more the doctor signed me off sick because I was in so much pain. And no amount of sleep, diet, or exercise could fix me when the problem was job-related.
Did that mean I couldn’t do the job? No. It just meant it wasn’t the right work environment for me.
Provide job security
In unpredictable times, offering employees job security means they have one less thing on their minds.
Being unsure whether you have a job next week creates a huge amount of stress for an employee and will reduce their productivity. They may also wonder why they should bother putting effort in at all if they may be let go soon.
One of my friends told me the other day that she knew of someone who had told his employees they didn’t have a job as of Monday. On Saturday afternoon, at closing time. They didn’t open on Sundays.
This level of unpredictability is unfair to employees and doesn’t allow them any time to plan.
Where possible, be open about the organization’s financial stability. It’s another important factor in employee happiness.
Sharing information shows you’re committed to transparency and want to foster an open work environment.
Offer opportunities for employees to use their skills
Every employee has a different set of skills that can benefit your business. For example, you may have someone in finance who’s a great speaker. Why not make the most of that ability?
Perhaps they could speak at industry events, or share what it’s like to work for your business in a video.
They get to stretch their abilities, improving employee happiness, and you get the boost to your employer brand.
How to monitor employee happiness
So how do you measure employee happiness? Simple: ask your team!
Using Workrowd, you can send automated surveys to check in with your employees and see how they’re doing.
You can ask what they like or dislike about their role, and what you could do better as a business to support them.
You can also connect employees via more organized employee groups.
Does this sound like something that would be useful at your organization? Get in touch today to book your free demo at hello@workrowd.com.
