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How happy are your employees? Every company and entrepreneur should take a moment to consider this big question. The happiness of your best people determines a lot, from productivity and engagement to overall retention. Happy workers are more likely to dream big, work hard, and stick around for years to come.
Yet there’s something of an employee engagement crisis happening right now in the world of business. Gallup discovered in a recent survey as much as 70 percent of the American workforce is disengaged on the job. It’s more important than ever before to have happy people improving your company culture.
With the skills gap widening, and 38 percent of companies with open positions they just can’t fill, the competition is raging to scoop up the right people before the competition. Highly skilled candidates have their pick of companies desperate for their expertise, and a positive company culture can often be the deciding factor to get these qualified people in the door.
Obviously, the benefit of having highly motivated and enthusiastic people who look forward to stepping into the office every morning is also a factor. But the traditional ways businesses are going about employee engagement and boosting employee morale aren’t working. Here are four paths to employee happiness you may have never considered traveling:
Foster Full Transparency
If you want a happier workforce, don’t keep any secrets. According to a survey from TINYPulse, management transparency is the top factor when determining employee happiness. After analyzing more than 40,000 responses, the company discovered a high correlation coefficient between organizational transparency and how happy employees were at their workplace.
Companies are taking note and some are even embracing radical transparency, sending all meeting notes to the entire company, making salaries public, and opening up communication between all levels of the company. If you want to make your best people happy, it’s time to trust and empower them with a transparent company culture.
Connect Co-workers
Employee happiness is 23 percent more correlated to connections with coworkers instead of managers , TINYPulse revealed. The connections your people form to each other can be important determining factors if your best and brightest are happy on the job. You can help these connections form and strengthen by making space for coworkers to get to know each other on a more personal level.
Plan fun outings for the workforce, get your best people to work together in a team setting, and create company-wide fun like picnics and parties. If you bring your people together, they can form bonds which result in increased morale and better workplace performance.
Say Goodbye to Meetings
Every day, there are 11 million business meetings taking place -- yet, few of these meetings are truly as productive as we’d like to think. In fact, every year we lose approximately $37 billion on unproductive meetings. These meetings, perhaps unsurprisingly, can have a negative impact on your team’s happiness and morale.
Instead of scheduling nonstop meetings, look at ways to cut back or even eliminate meetings altogether. Block out times during the day, or even specific days, and make them meeting dead zones. If possible, look for alternatives to calling a meeting, like a quick conversation or a brainstorming session. If a meeting is inevitable, put a concrete schedule in place so everyone knows the meeting’s function. Set a strict cap on the length of meetings so they don’t eat your teams entire afternoon.
Roam About the Office
It’s easy to feel stuck when you’re staring at the same four walls everyday, talking to the same people, and walking to the same desk. It’s important to give your best people challenging projects and opportunity for personal and professional growth. Allowing them to switch up their physical locations, however, can also help keep things fresh for your team.
For example, workers at travel site Kayak.com travel from desk to desk every few months to get a change of scenery. Giving your team the opportunity to move to different parts of the office and work with different people can help with the feeling of stagnation, which can sometimes creep in for even the most motivated employee. It can also help employees work together and bond across departments, leading to better and more creative ideas.
You need to keep your best people happy if you want your company to succeed, and often this means thinking outside the box. If you focus your company culture on employee happiness, however, you’ll be more likely to attract great talent and keep your best people around.
What do you think? How do you keep your best people happy? Share in the comments!
Image courtesy of Donna Cymek, Flickr
