How To Ensure Employee Happiness: 6 Secret Tips

The attrition of employees is spreading to many organizations, making hiring harder than ever. Historically,  employees oftentimes settled for good pay and reasonable employee benefits, but nowadays, more importance is given to a different set of employee values.

Understanding your employees’ interests, passions, and behavior at the workplace, as well as prioritizing their happiness can greatly benefit your organization. Here are some secret tips to ensure your employees' happiness.

 

Tips To Keep Your Employees Happy

As a leader, it's essential that you focus more on your employees’ well-being than their performance. The reason is that the latter naturally follows the former. Studies show happy employees have increased productivity resulting in higher profitability than their unhappy peers.

Let’s look at these 6 secret tips in brief, and how it potentially has an impact on employee happiness.

1. Work-Life Balance
2. Foster Employee Connections
3. Offer Flexible Work Hours
4. Recognition Is Key
5. Work Culture
6. Career Growth Opportunities

 

Work-Life Balance

The post-pandemic work-life scenario has been challenging for employees. Remote work has made it all-too-easy to blur the lines between work and personal life. It is still a challenge for many employees to find a balance between their personal and professional life.

Helping your employees find their right work-life balance is crucial and has a major impact on productivity and mental health. According to research by Zippia, 72% of employees believe work-life balance is key when choosing a job. Also, 67.2% of workers say that work culture is the biggest culprit behind poor work-life balance.

 

Foster Employee Connections

Employee engagement in the U.S. saw its first annual decline in 2022. Only 32% of employees report being engaged in their work while 18% are actively disengaged.

Though there are multiple reasons behind employee disengagement at work, a research paper on why workers disengage discovered 7 potential reasons for disengagement. Out of these 7 were the lack of organizational support, welfare, and work environment.

It's clear that having a strong connection with your employees can have significant positive impact. Feel free to read our blog on employee connection and ways to improve it.

 

Offer Flexible Working Hours

Corporate culture has changed in so many ways over the years. One noticeable change is working hours, ever since the pandemic hit. Many employees had to adapt to juggling child care, home school, and business meetings all in the same place.

The need for flexibility increased exponentially during the pandemic and it's one thing that's stuck around. Flexible working hours have been shown to increase productivity and ensure employee happiness in the workplace. This way employees get to allocate time for personal commitments and also focus on getting their jobs done.

 

Recognition Is Key

Studies show that employees feel motivated to do their best when they are recognized for their efforts and hard work. Here are some important statistics on employee recognition:

• 80% of employees would feel better if they were appreciated at work (Zippia).
• Only 63% percent of U.S. employees feel a sense of appreciation at work (Statista).
• 82% of employees consider recognition an important part of happiness at work (TheRetailBulletin).

Research done on the impact of employee recognition on job performance shows that rewards and recognition have a positive impact on employee performance and creates a strong relationship between employees and employers. Check out our blog on employee recognition and reward ideas for your organization.

 

Work Culture

Creating a positive work environment for employees has never been more important. Work culture has been proven to have a significant impact on employee performance and happiness. It all depends on your organization’s core values, mission, and vision that contribute to the essence of workplace culture.

To ensure employee happiness, work culture must be built on positive values, healthy relationships, and trust. Toxic work culture affects everyone in the workplace and is one of the major causes of employee turnover in recent years. According to Teamstage statistics, 94% of entrepreneurs and 88% of job seekers say that a happy work culture is vital for their success.

 

Career Growth

Employees focus on long-term development in their careers, and they are looking for growth opportunities to stay in the organization. In fact, WorkStep surveyed over 18,000 hourly workers across 150 companies and found that lack of career growth was the top reason for turnover.

In truth, this finding should be unsurprising. People want to feel as though they’re growing, developing, and advancing.

Research made in The Impact of Career Growth on Knowledge-Based Employee Engagement shows that career growth has a positive impact on knowledge, employee engagement, commitment, and organization.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some effective ways to ensure employee happiness?

• Create a positive workplace culture.
• Appreciate them with benefits and monetary rewards.
• Motivate employees to perform better.
• Offer career growth opportunities.
• Prioritize their work-life balance and flexible working hours.

 

Do happier employees stay longer in an organization?

When employees have a clear expectation of the job requirements, working conditions, pay, and employee benefits, they tend to stay in the organization longer. However, happiness is the key factor in determining the turnover rate of employees.

 

What are some of the benefits of having happy employees?

When employees feel happy and satisfied with their work, they:

1. Feel invested in their job.
2. Are more responsible.
3. Maintain healthy peer-to-peer relationships.
4. Actively engage in team-building activities.
5. Stick to organizational goals.
6. Tend to stay longer in the organization.

Create Your Own Recognition Program and Ensure Employee Happiness with Terryberry

Employee happiness is vital to the success of your organization and must be prioritized in the workplace. With significant impacts on the level of employee performance, mental wellbeing, building healthy relationships, and growing as an individual, employee happiness is critical for fueling success.

Terryberry is focused on helping organizations create purpose-led and engaged organizations through the power of recognition. We help organizations:

• Customize employee recognition programs.
• Provide Wellness Solutions.
• Create Performance and Incentive Rewards.
• Build an all-in-one employee recognition software to transform your organization’s employee engagement.