Employee happiness: Why is it so invaluable?
Ensuring that your workforce are at their healthiest and happiest, has a direct impact on their productivity. An Oxford University study found that employees are 13% more productive when they’re happy at work. The hard work and determination of an employee is not only derived from their need to earn a living, but also from their happiness within the workplace. Employees can find inspiration from this new found happiness, which will do wonders for revenue. As well as this, customer service and overall productivity in terms of KPI’s and quality of work will see a massive improvement, which can make your employees take on the role of brand ambassador, who champions the great work that the organisation does for both staff and customers. On the other hand, we know you can’t please everyone. However, you can try, and if they are still not satisfied then at least you’ve shown that you care.
Top threats to employee happiness for 2020:
- Financial circumstances
- Loneliness
- Failure to find a happy medium for work/life balances
- Emotional wellbeing
You will often find that each factor that is negatively impacting their overall wellbeing, will have an impact on another factor. Unfortunately, it’s just how the cookie crumbles in life. However, as an employer and as someone who often spends a lot of time with employees, it’s a great opportunity to launch a strategy to have a positive impact on their wellbeing.
- Get support from your superior
Getting management buy-in is a great way for the employees to get engaged. If you’re in control of the budget and decision making on this then you can head over to step 2.
- Wellbeing survey
The best way to get buy-in from your team is to show that you care. Ask them what they want from work that will make them happier. This way you have a clear picture of what it is you will need to do to improve their wellbeing. Send out a survey with a few questions that asks how they feel about their wellbeing, what they need or want, and what they would like to see. Make sure that it’s clear that your door is always open for a private chat too.
- Health check
Checking the absence rates and turnover numbers along with the results from the wellbeing survey will give you can idea of who needs a little more support that others, and get to the bottom of the cause.
- Plan
Once you have pinpointed the financial, physical and emotional aspects that need to be improved, you can then look to set goals that are broken down into smaller, more tangible tasks. Document these goals and keep your progress documented consistently too. Link your wellbeing strategy to your overall company strategies and initiatives to demonstrate that there is ROI on the wellbeing strategy being put into place. Research into the costs of the smaller actions that are essential for you to reach your goals.
- Budget
From the list of actions, and the costs, you will have a picture of what your employees want and how much it will cost to better their wellbeing.
- Wellbeing Ambassadors
It’s time for you to look at the whole workforce and allocate people who will be willing and able to act as ambassadors for the wellbeing strategy. Ideally, you can allocate one person per team to do this. They can persuade their team to take on the new wellbeing initiatives and they can also get feedback on how it is going, by consistently monitoring the employee’s wellbeing.
- Promoting your initiative
Use the following methods to promote your wellbeing strategy:
- Encourage managers to liaise with employees directly
- Ensure that your wellbeing champions are championing the strategy
- Market the initiative internally through any communication methods that you have (phone calls, team video calls, emails, sales days etc)
- Challenges
Setting fun challenges for the team can raise morale. It could be a challenge that they could video record if they’re working from home, or it could be an in office challenge where they can all compete (still ensuring social distance). You could do even do a 5K challenge and see who can complete it is in the least time, or maybe a drawing challenge to see who has the most artistic talent (and probably to see who has the least for a few chuckles). It’s just a bit of light hearted fun for the team.
- Measure and monitor
Measuring the impact of your wellbeing strategy is essential. If it’s going well, keep going, but if you were hoping to see more results then maybe it’s time to reassess the smaller tasks that you have set out for the initiative to see if that gets you more of a result. You can do this every quarter with another wellbeing survey.
- Celebrate the successes
Share the stats from any results in your wellbeing strategy through the same communication channels that you used to champion and promote the initiatives. You could also share testimonials from members of the team on how they have seen or felt an improvement on their wellbeing. Don’t forget to celebrate!
We hope you have taken something positive away from this and you’re willing to try it out. If you’re stuck for ways that you can implement this or even if you want some ideas for the team challenges, then you can get in contact with us for a chat and we can share some of the ideas that we have had at Strategic People. As well as this, we’re ready and waiting to help you out with your next hire or your next job search. SP//
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