Employee happiness must come before profit. Without your employees, you have nothing. Too many companies put profit or customers first. They think staff are replaceable and treat them as so. But if you treat staff as replaceable then you will be forever spending time and money replacing them, instead of building a great company.
1. Happy Employees are More Productive
Deadlines and threats, actual or perceived, have been known to encourage productivity in the workplace. However, having a mean boss or working to meet strict deadlines aren’t the only tactics to achieve productivity and growth in the workplace. ‘Happier’ companies outperform their competitors by 20%. Happy employees are more likely to accomplish tasks at work which means that a team of four happy employees may be able to perform the work of five unhappy employees. A Harvard Business Review article on positive intelligence notes that companies who refrain from adding stress to their employees’ roles see much happier employees and more company growth.
2. Happiness Is Connected to Creativity
For true innovation, a degree of vulnerability and creativity is required. Employees must feel safe enough to make mistakes, admit their errors, and try a different approach. Happy employees are likely to feel more confident in their abilities, and therefore will propose or attempt new tactics to deliver better results for the company. Further, unhappy employees experiencing stress are more likely to have their amygdala (a region in the brain) shut down some brain function in order to gather resources and prepare to fight or flee. This is an old response that’s still very prevalent to present day human psychology and physiology. The result; employees have less energy and capacity to think creatively, connect emotionally to their work and their team, and feel good about themselves and the situation.
3. Happiness Negates Stress and Improves Focus
Stress has a multitude of challenging impacts on the body. Stress directly affects our ability to focus. It also causes physical illness and studies have also shown that our ability to perceive danger decreases because of stress. However, when we are happy, our perceived levels of stress decline. Having a workspace where employees feel safe, comfortable, and can manage their stress leads to a more productive and effective work output. Foster happiness in the workplace, and you’ll see a noticeable change in your employees well-being and performance.
4. Gratitude Leads to Better Performance
Scientific studies show that those who express gratitude daily can improve their psychological wellbeing and perform better in life. One study found that “a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits”. A work place filled with happy employees, grateful for their job and excited about their day is a much more productive and nicer place to work than one where micromanagers and quarterly goals are cursed silently by the team.
5. Happiness Leads to Collaboration and Teamwork
There’s nothing like an in-office silo to really rile the stress and anger amongst your employees. Withholding information, blanking certain team members, and generally throwing each other under the bus is not uncommon when stress levels are high and individuals don’t feel like they can trust their team or their managers. Distrust leads to lower performance. Sharing the bigger picture with all employees encourages openness. Further, whose more fun to work with; someone who is happy most of the time, eager to help, and excited about work, or someone who moans incessantly, is reluctant to give more than 10% and generally makes going to work a little less enticing? Research shows that people with best friends at work are seven times more likely to fully engage in their tasks.
6. Happy Employees Make for Better Customer Service and Sales
We’ve all encountered an extremely grumpy customer service agent at some point or other. In fact, asking for help from disgruntled Dave or irate Irene can really turn off our love for a company. On the other hand, we’ve also had customer calls with individuals whose happiness practically beams out of chat box. Thrilled Theo and cheerful Charlie take an annoying, upsetting, or infuriating problem presented by their customer and go out of their way to rectify it. The obvious difference between the two attitudes? Happiness. Happy employees, who feel supported by their bosses and secure in their jobs exude contentment through their customer support and sales communication. The results? Higher sales, better customer satisfaction, and increased employee and customer retainment.
7. Happier Employees Are Easier To Manage and Better Leaders
Happier employees are easier to manage and are less likely to be looking for jobs during working hours. Equally, they tend to be better leaders, getting results out of their team without high employee turnover. Happy employees fix problems instead of complaining about them. They also tend to make better decisions.
8. Happy Employees Stick Around
I’ve worked with a few CEOs who seem all too happy to replace their employees. The cost of doing so can be astronomical, however. Some research has put the cost at £30k whilst other research suggests that it’s more likely to be 20% of annual salary. Why so much? Think of the advertising, onboarding, new employee errors and slowed or lost productivity during the whole process. Even if you’re replacing one freelancer with another and saving on benefits and salary costs, you’re still causing untold and unnecessary disruption to your business. If you are perceived to have higher turnover rates, you’ll create a small red flag for your business that other employees and contractors will be wary of. Conversely, if you have a job where employees are happier and feel intellectually challenged, they’ll sacrifice higher salaries and benefits to keep that position.
Focus on Happiness and the Rest Will Follow
I work with CEOs who are at pains to focus on happiness sometimes; the stress of their own business goals is all-consuming. The thought of running a “feel good” centre disguised as an office isn’t appealing to some, when actually, the outcome of such a tactic is far more effective than pushing employees to deliver profit. Simple stress management tactics, like writing lists of things that are causing stress and taking concrete steps to address the things you can control, can change the entire make-up of your team and positively impact the growth of your business. I encourage anyone to hesitate before letting employees go, and think about how small changes could make them happier and more productive members of your company.
Read more of my thoughts on business and gain valuable insights on start-ups and scale-ups by following Bamboo Orchard on LinkedIn.
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