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Wednesday, August 19, 2020

How Happy Employees Make Your Venture More Productive


Happiness does have a significant impact on the productivity of your employees. It’s not just an empty claim. Science says so.

In collaboration with British Telecom, Oxford University’s Saïd School of Business researched the influence of happiness on productivity in employees.

The researchers have found that when employees felt happier, they did their work faster, made more phone calls per hour, and converted more calls into sales. As a result, researchers reported a 13% increase in productivity.

Work Environment Is a Large Contributor to Employee Happiness

The above-mentioned study proves that the components of employee happiness are not entirely connected to personal life or any other outside-of-work factors. The researchers from Oxford even took into consideration the possible impact of good and bad weather on employee happiness and found no connection.

Thus, the Oxford University study proves that employers should not send their employees seeking for happiness and satisfaction somewhere outside of their workplace.

The workplace environment and personal life of the employees are not mutually exclusive and have a significant impact on each other. While low job satisfaction can have a negative impact on an employee’s personal life, a positive work environment can also significantly improve employee’s health and well-being, thus, contributing to their overall happiness.

Exploring the Connection Between Employee Happiness and Job Productivity

We now know that the work environment has an effect as significant as personal life on an employee’s productivity.

But what does low happiness and satisfaction levels can cost your company?

Harvard Business Review referenced to a study by Queens School of Business and Gallup Organization, which found that disengaged workers had:

       37% higher absenteeism

       49% more work-related accidents

       60% more errors

As a result, the organizations, where these employees worked, after some time had:

       18% lower overall productivity

       16% lower profitability

       37% lower job growth

       65% lower share price

According to this study, surveyed companies, depending on the size, lost from $100,000 to millions of dollars annually on average from low employee happiness and satisfaction levels.

So, what lies behind employee happiness? What should you do as an employer to contribute to employee happiness?

Let’s take a look.

1. Foster the Atmosphere of Respect

Communication at work is the first thing that you need to take into consideration when it comes to employee happiness.

Unfortunately, whenever there is a disagreement between a supervisor and an employee and among employees as well, people tend to use a passive-aggressive approach to dealing with conflict.

Passive-aggressive communication at work can manifest itself in a variety of ways:

       ignoring proper direct channels of communication (spreading rumors, using back-handed compliments and other passive-aggressive comments)

       sabotaging collaboration and healthy communication

       silent treatment as well as harsh unnecessary criticism, nitpicking

       complete refusal to praise employees

Furthermore, praise can also be used in a passive-aggressive context. For instance, a supervisor can use the achievements of one employee to shame another employee and their lack of initiative.

That is why the first step on your way to the happiness of your employees would be getting read of passive-aggressive communication and focusing more on a respectful attitude. And in case you need to give a negative comment, do it in a constructive way and offer your solution to the problem.

2.  Take Care of Your Employee’s Safety

The second contributing factor is making sure that your employees feel safe at work. You might think about the physical safety of your employees right now, but we refer more to safe communication.

While eliminating passive-aggressive attitudes at a workplace is the first step to communication, based on trust, it still isn’t enough to get your employees to feel comfortable enough to share, and this is your end goal.

Trust in a leader is one of the components of employee happiness and job satisfaction. When a leader has their employees’ best interest at heart, it motivates the workers to contribute more.

The research published in the Organization Science journal showed that employees that trusted their leader and safely communicated their issues directly, learned faster, and had better performance.

That’s why trust should be incorporated in the corporate culture and nurtured from the very beginning. Whenever there is a newcomer in your company, you should notify them that your workplace environment should foster empathy and interpersonal kindness, rather than a passive-aggressive attitude and disregard of others.

3. Don’t Encourage Working Overtime

The last tip is concerned more with work ethic than with communication, however, it has a great impact on employee happiness.

There are many companies across the U.S. that have high turnover. While high turnover is not necessarily a bad thing and can be connected to seasonal work and high competition in the industry, in most cases it is caused by overworking and workplace-related stress.

There is a number of high-stress jobs, from insurance advisors to marketers. “After our first marketing campaign, we had a high turnover, which prompted us to hire freelance marketers to help our team cope with large amounts of work,” says Estelle Liotard, senior editor and the head of content marketing at BestWritingAdvisor, a writing services review site, sharing her company’s experience dealing with high turnover.

To help your employees cope with all their tasks within working hours, you can:

       Reduce the number of daily meetings. Project status updates, for instance, can be unnecessary, if you use project management software, available to all your employees.

       Introduce flexible work schedules. Different people have different high-performance and low-performance times. Some people work well early in the morning, while others have a performance boost after 4 p.m.

       Establish an overtime policy. Overtime work should be an exception rather than a rule. Forcing your employees to work overtime almost every day can lead to burnout, which inevitably will have a negative impact on the productivity of your venture.

Your employees may also be forced to work overtime because they don’t have the right tools and resources to complete their tasks within working hours. Encourage your employees to share, which tools they require to do their job best and equip them with everything they need to do their work efficiently.

Wrapping Up

Science confirms that a happy employee is a productive employee. Moreover, it is your task as an employer to contribute to their happiness.

Help your employees work smart, not hard, and encourage open communication in the company, where there is no place for a passive-aggressive attitude. Nurture honesty and interpersonal kindness, and you will see, how the productivity of your employees rises through the roof, making your venture a dream place to work at.

Author bio: Melanie Sovann is a professional writer, a blogger, and editor at EssaySupply, the site which provides best research papers online. She also loves writing about smart business models and facilitating a healthy work environment. 



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