Employee happiness seems unimportant to many businesses, particularly the new ones or the old-fashioned ones. New businesses often feel like they don’t have the budget while older ones tend to be dismissive of this one aspect.
Data, however, suggests that around 50% of employees consider searching for a new job because they site “being unhappy” as the major reason. While other factors can also contribute to solidifying this decision, many will make the decision on the basis of their happiness. If they aren’t happy, they aren’t sticking around for long.
Easy to Implement It
One common misconception is that many businesses believe that they don’t have the budget to focus on employee happiness. The best part though is that employee happiness is easy to implement it. All you have to do is pay attention to the following:
1. Effective Management
Managing talent properly ensures that there are no problems regarding the workload. Employees who have a poor work-life balance, as well as job related stress, are more likely to experience unhappiness and dissatisfaction at their workplace. They are also likely to face more absenteeism, health problems, and other issues.
2. Room for Growth
Make sure that there is room for growth in the form of training, seminars and more. A company needs to have the potential for growth for an employee to want to invest their time into it. When they don’t see the company’s future, they aren’t going to envision a big future there for themselves either.
3. Get Feedback
Always make sure to communicate with your employees. Run surveys, talk to them, and build a relationship where your employees can open up with you. Employees experience higher levels of happiness when they have a good relationship with their coworkers and their managers.
4. Active Engagement
Group projects, team building activities, and company events are great engagement activities where different departments can coordinate and intermingle. It creates more camaraderie and reduces the departmental divide, which can occur at times. Similarly, hosting group lunches once or twice a month can also play a role in engaging everyone.
With the help of all these tips, you can easily improve employee happiness and make your small business more productive.
It Really Does Boost Productivity
Currently, data shows that employee happiness does play a vital role in raising job satisfaction as well as improve overall productivity. Happy employees are stated to have 30% more focus and are 50% more engaged than unhappy ones. Similarly, they are also 63% more likely to stay at a current company. Employee happiness is also deeply tied with their ability to grow at a company.
In fact, happy employees thrive best in an environment where they are experiencing constant growth. When the overall wellbeing of a place is high, a business can expect to see high productivity, improved loyalty, and less absenteeism. It is nicknamed the Google Effect because Google has done more for the happiness and wellbeing of its employees. In return, they saw an instant 37% boost in their productivity.
