15 ways to make employees happy
Originally posted May 2, 2014 by Dan Cook on www.benefitspro.com.
You can offer employees a lavish buffet lunch onsite every day, bring in a masseuse on Fridays and hold the company picnic at Disney World. But at the end of the day, if you have the wrong people in the wrong jobs, you will still not have a happy workforce.
That is the message from social-recognition software provider Globoforce in a white paper titled “The Science of Happiness.” Most of the material cited in the paper comes from sources other than Globoforce. However, the company teases out tips for creating a culture of happiness based on its research of others’ research. And therein one can find tasty tidbits of advice that may begin to transform your workplace into a happy one.
“HR leaders encounter a lot of advice about how to manage culture — to increase engagement, decrease turnover, and drive recruitment. But when it comes to creating a culture employees love and don’t want to leave, employee happiness is the metric that really matters,” Globoforce says in a preamble to its data and advice. “Happy employees are what make a culture great.”
The paper says happy employees:
• stay twice as long in their jobs as their least happy colleagues;
• believe they are achieving their potential twice as much;
• spend 65 percent more time feeling energized;
• are 58 percent more likely to go out of the way to help their colleagues;
• identify 98 percent more strongly with the values of their organization;
• are 186 percent more likely to recommend their organization to a friend.
“Unlike culture itself, we have hard numbers on the science of employee happiness and how to directly increase it. It all leads to one conclusion: concentrating your efforts on making employees happy is the most direct and powerful way to impact your organizational culture,” Globoforce says.
Now, to the tips for putting a smile on your workers’ face.
5 ways to build alignment
1. Pay closer attention to job-person fit.
2. Fire people who don’t fit your culture.
3. Help employees find greater meaning in your values.
4. Show workers how your company fits into a bigger picture.
5. Cultivate more trust and flexibility into your policies.
5 ways to build positivity
1. Broadcast personal and team successes.
2. Offer fast, positive feedback.
3. Open up multidirectional communication lines.
4. Offer resources and emotional support.
5. Encourage employees to express gratitude.
5 ways to build progress
1. Set clear, measurable and achievable organizational goals.
2. Show employees how they fit into the bigger picture.
3. Offer training for mastery of new and existing skills.
4. Respect individualism.
5. Reward excellence and effort.
3 Simple Ways to Make People Happy at Work
By Margaret Heffernan
Source: inc.com
Learn these strategies to make your employees happy, and extravagantly execute them. You'll create a better business.
Most CEOs know that, if their workers are happy, they're also more productive. But how to make them happy is the challenge. Many take the goal too personally and try to build staff contentment through personal relationships. They get exhausted and find the strategy simply won't scale.
So what can you realistically pull off to make people happy at work?
Professional growth
People want to stretch, to develop their natural talents, feel their life has a narrative and is going somewhere. When they feel that they are growing, they may be exhausted but they're also inspired, energetic, and willing to take on a great deal. (That's one reason why investing in people can deliver a higher return that investing in new technology.) Anyone who reports to you (and anyone who reports to them) should have a professional development plan. That will keep everybody engaged, busy, and--eventually--happy.
Strong community
Everybody wants to be proud of where they work, to feel that they are investing the most precious thing they have--time--in something that matters. For some companies, the mission or the products are enough. If you make things that cure disease, create cleaner air, save carbon emissions, or improve life in any way, your business has an intrinsic sense of purpose which is probably what drew people to it in the first place. If you make ball bearings, knowledge-management software, light switches, or other kinds of widgets, you may find it tougher to demonstrate how you make the world a better place. Superficial social-responsibility projects won't fill this gap for you. You need to create direct links between the success of the business and the community you serve. These need to involve the entire work force and should be active, public, visible, and long lasting. Many companies get their staff to choose the causes or charities they support. The more they're engaged in these commitments, the more meaningful they will be to them--and your company community.
Fair treatment
"Everybody here is somebody." That's how one call-center rep once explained to me why he loved the company where he worked. The job wasn't thrilling, the pay wasn't great, but every single person was treated with love and respect. Just walking through the door, he said, made you glad to come to work. When people got sick, co-workers worried. When someone was due to retire, she most likely came back to work part time, just for the camaraderie. Sooner or later, everyone in a company like this talks about it as being like "family." The CEO knows everyone's name--even the names of everyone's kids and pets. This kind of fair--and kind--treatment also means startlingly low turnover rates, which also saves money. But it's not really about the money.
The very best companies I've studied and written about honor these principles and enact them lavishly. They don't pay lip service, and they don't do the bare minimum; they go overboard. Their CEOs do so because they know the secret of leadership: Look after the people, and the people look after the business.