Crafting Well-Being and Happiness at Work: Key Employer Branding Variables

Many of us spend more time at work with colleagues than we do at home with our family.

You could thus argue that one's well-being and being happy at work counts for more than 50 per cent of life’s puzzle.

People want to be happy, and companies always want to be more successful, but that need not be at the expense of people’s happiness. In fact, happy people make a much more significant contribution to a company's success. So you must solve for happiness and well-being, both for your employees’ and your company’s sake.

With all the testing, interviewing, questioning, listening, surveying, and observing of people being done in the last many years in the work on employer branding, there are three key ingredients to happiness at work: a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of impact.

By incorporating these three variables into your employer branding, you can attract those people who will be able to find happiness at your company, which means more fulfilling lives for them and better business results for you.

#1: A Sense of Belonging

A sense of belonging is the feeling of being a match and sharing values, beliefs, and interests with others.

Many employer branding strategies focus only on the positive: the opportunities and benefits of working at a company. Yet the challenges are just as important and are a key part of creating a sense of belonging.

Your employer branding should include employee stories of triumph, motivation, and aspiration, but also of challenge, failure, and adversity. This makes it easier for your talented audience to decide whether they identify with those people.

By telling stories of both the good and the bad—the benefits and the challenges—you reveal your employees' work ethic, personality, character, preferences, values, and behaviours. Your talent audience is able to live vicariously through the eyes of your employees, giving real insight into how it might feel to work at your organization.

With an honest picture of what it is like to work at your organization, applicants will be better able to assess whether it is a place they could belong.

#2: A Sense of Purpose

A sense of purpose is feeling like you have something worthwhile to achieve, a reason you exist, and a goal to focus your attention and efforts toward that has personal meaning.

In telling employee stories of challenge or adversity, it is important to clearly articulate what’s at the end of that struggle. You must answer the question of why. Why do people do what they do, and what’s possible if they do?

Few, if any, people are willing to struggle simply for the sake of struggling; they need a sense of purpose—something that makes the struggle worth it.

You must be clear about what your company stands for and how that aligns with what everyone is working toward as a collective. This makes it easy to demonstrate the meaning and the value behind the work—the purpose.

#3: A Sense of Impact

A sense of impact is feeling like you make a difference with what you do. It’s a reason to keep doing what you’re doing because you see the value you create and the difference you make.

In terms of employer branding, you need to convey to your talented audience how they will be able to create an impact at your organization.

You cannot shy away from the harsh realities here. You must be truthful about what is required to be successful at your organization so that your talented audience can assess whether they will be able to feel a sense of impact.

For instance, to be successful, maybe your employees need to be able to handle a lot of rote, repetitive work, or maybe they need to be able to make quick decisions and adapt to a constantly changing environment. By being honest, you will attract those candidates who are best suited to those roles and who can thus go on to feel a sense of impact within your organization.

A sense of belonging, purpose, and impact are all needed for well-being and happiness, but each of these things looks slightly different to each person. This is why one person at a company could be incredibly happy while another person at the same company is miserable.

You cannot make everyone happy. You must find those people who are a “good match” for your company—those people who are aligned with the sense of belonging, purpose, and impact your company provides. Only then can you solve for well-being and happiness.

The above is adapted from Give and Get Employer Branding.

#WorkplaceWellbeing #EmployerBranding #EmployeeEngagement #WorkplaceCulture #purpose #impact