Steps to Measure Happiness at Work

Everyone who runs a company understands that happy employees are simply better to have as your team member. Their energy and enthusiasm are infectious and they can make even the most tiring workday way brighter. That said, many are confused when it comes to measuring employee happiness.

The professionals made up of happy employees do not just succeed but also continue to thrive even in the most challenging times. Leaders and business owners must find ways to invest in the happiness of employees. When you start focusing on this in the beginning, it can sometimes seem that happiness metrics are difficult to pin down.

Differentiating between employee engagement, happiness, and satisfaction can be baffling. Most of all, measuring happiness is a pretty challenging endeavour. It is safe to say that happiness is not so much of a quantifiable phenomenon. However, when you understand how employee happiness reveals itself in the workplace, you also manage to measure it and improve it in the long run.

Employee Happiness

The point where employee engagement and professional satisfaction coincide is called employee happiness. It is the overall quality of employee experience that goes a step further than employee satisfaction and this is one of the most important building blocks of employee engagement.

When employees are satisfied in their roles, they have comparatively few complaints. However, they may still explore other opportunities if presented with the option. Engaged employees are personally invested in the success of their company. They go the extra mile in completing their tasks and their loyalty to the business is also high.

Business owners must keep in mind that employee happiness is important for reaching milestones at work. Employee satisfaction, engagement, and happiness go hand in hand and they must be considered as different stages of employee experience.

Importance of Measuring Happiness at Work

It is important to measure happiness at work for seeing where your workplace happiness stands at the present, identify patterns, and make suitable improvements. When you do not measure work happiness, it becomes difficult to reap the benefits and there are many attached to workplace happiness.

Ensuring happiness at the workplace will ensure that there is great employee retention, improved productivity, stronger company culture, and increased customer retention.

Measuring Employee Happiness

When it comes to measuring happiness at work, you must understand that employee engagement trends and employee happiness indicators must be looked out for so that the process can become seamless. Below mentioned are some of the steps that can help you to measure happiness at work.

1. Design and Conduct a Survey

When your company is trying to grow the revenue, it is important to know exactly how much money you are making and which departments are lagging behind so that growth can be secured.

Boosting employee happiness is something that works in the same way. You must understand the present work happiness by asking all the employees what they think. You can sit and brainstorm while designing this survey.?

The survey must be able to gather real-time insights into how the employees feel when they are at work. Some of the things that you can ask for include the overall mood of the employees at work, and how fulfilling people feel while completing their daily tasks.

2. Regular Honest Conversations

The medical surveys can give you direct feedback. However, there is a way that is even better than these surveys and that is to engage in one on one conversations that can highlight the added benefits. One on one meetings and performance reviews help in contextualizing the employee survey responses.

You can take note of things such as body language and tone as you gain a lot more details that can emerge with face to face conversations. Once you start talking to the employees while making them feel comfortable, you will be amazed at the information that you come to know.

Holding these kinds of conversations every two weeks is one of the best decisions for the future of your company. Timing-wise, this depends on your schedule and preference but anything from 15 to 20 minutes should do. This much time is enough to speak to your employees and take their valuable input.

3. Team Innovations

This is a tangible metric that can tell you a lot about happiness at work. When a team innovates, it indicates that the team is happy too. Happiness at work depends on employees doing new, fulfilling, and unique tasks that fuel employee motivation.

When employees feel happy, they feel motivated and in turn, their mind starts thinking creatively. They come up with ideas that solve the current problems and also improve many things for the future. Not many businesses realize this but this is where success begins. The more innovative, the better your business will do.

If an employee continues to do dull and monotonous work each day then the routine for most of the day starts stagnating. On the other hand, innovative ideas on the behalf of employees show that they are inspired and feel comfortable sharing ideas. These are important requisites that define employee happiness.

4. Feedback Opportunities

Honest employee feedback is necessary for making tangible improvements to improve employee happiness. Of course, getting employees to open up to their senior leaders and confess if they are miserable at work is not so much of an easy task.

The comment boxes help in bridging the need for honest feedback and the ability to make employees feel comfortable sharing. Anonymous feedback can be included so that the employees feel confident knowing that their anonymity is guaranteed and provides reliable results.

As long as the company culture is that of taking action on positive criticism, it is all good. Everyone working in the company from top to bottom must have an attitude that encourages learning from mistakes. The feedback from employees can do a lot of good for the company if it is taken rightly.

5. Employee Wellness

This must not be any secret that employee stress is similar to unhappy employees. In case you are not investing in employee wellness then you are reaping the repercussions when it comes to employee happiness levels.

The staff must have resources at their disposal to care for their well being. If you are not sure about whether or not this is the case then you can carry out an employee wellness study while having your staff evaluate their well being.?

The staff must be happy with the management’s ability to support the health and well being of everyone in the company. The staff should not be stressed at work and there must be resources available to make sure that well-being is ensured at the workplace.

6. Customer Metrics

When combined with the additional employee happiness indicators, the customer's insights can actually prove to be a good signal for employee happiness. Happy and engaged employees deliver better customer service.

If you wish to measure workplace happiness then you can work backwards and examine the customer satisfaction feedback. In case you feel that it is at an all-time low then it is unlikely that the employee happiness will also be high in an organization.

On the other hand, if the customers are satisfied then maybe the employees are happy and satisfied as well. Customer metrics can be gathered from digital marketing techniques to know how many customers are your brand promoters in true essence.

7. Hiring

Workplace happiness creates ripple effects in the industry. It is a fact that happy organizations attract much better hires. This means that you can measure metrics such as applications received per opening, time to fill positions, rate of acceptance, rate of successful hires, etc.

Organizations that wish to grow quickly must ensure that a fair share of steps is being taken to measure happiness at work. This is all the more relevant in growing industries and organizations where there is strong competition for the best talent.

8. Employee Performance

It is an understandable fact that team performance and happiness go hand in hand. When the team members are happy, they will go above and beyond in their tasks while making sure that the tasks are done well.

When the workplace is happy, the business is going to grow. This is because the team members do their best at each step of the way. The team creates to build much better products and services while paying more attention to getting the details right and just doing better overall. Overall, the employees deliver exceptional customer service.

If the leaders and business owners focus on factors such as employee productivity, product or service quality, workplace safety incidents, customer feedback, etc. then employee performance can also be improved.

9. Absenteeism

When considered independently, employee absenteeism can be a sign of many things together. However, if employee absenteeism becomes consistent, it can also say a lot about the happiness quotient of employees.

If there is high absenteeism then this may show that the employee is burnt out and is not any more motivated to show up at work. Changes must be made to ensure that the work-life balance comes back along with a robust solution that one must get to the core of the problem first.

Carrying out an employee motivation survey helps immensely in getting a better grip on the problem at hand. If you find ways to validate the fact that the employees feel motivated to show up at work each day then that is a good sign of workplace happiness.

10. Turnover Rate

If there is a lack of workplace happiness amongst the employees then you may start off seeing that the turnover rate is increasing. It starts with employees being absent and then vanishing. It is difficult to recruit top talent when your team members are moving out of the company each day.

Happy employees experience better workplace satisfaction and are also more inspired and driven in their roles. Their company loyalty is also very high. The opposite of this is true for unhappy employees. Workplace happiness is proportionate to lower employee retention.

In case you wish to stabilize the employee turnover in the long term then you must begin investing in employee happiness as soon as possible. The more you focus on raising the quotient of workplace happiness, the better it is going to be for the organization because the people who work for the organization will automatically want to do their best.

Conclusion

The people who work for you are your most valuable assets and are also responsible for ensuring your success. Measuring their happiness is a proven way of making them stay and encouraging them to bring out their best.

As a leader of the company, you should make sure that all the metrics that define the happiness quotient at work are focused on suitably. You must pay attention to these measures. These metrics are important for the company’s overall health and value.