Happiness Quotient Boosts Employee Productivity

A question any manager or leader often asks themselves is if their team is working to the best of its abilities. Does an employee need support to boost their productivity? Is a team member inching closer to burnout? The answer is to improve the happiness quotient of your organization and productivity will follow.

Optical illusion

As an HR business leader, you may think, ‘our employees are on a flexible work schedule,’ or ‘we offer excellent employee perks,’ or even ‘we have excellent remuneration packages,’ so we have happy employees. This may not be true, considering that employee happiness depends on four factors: appreciation, good supervision, job contentment, and company culture. If your organization scores high on these parameters, then you are an employee-centric organization.

Does it matter?

Just how important is the employee happiness quotient at your organization? This is one of the most important measures for a corporate positioning itself as a preferred destination for top talent. Once you get the right talent, you can get optimal productivity if you keep the happiness quotient of the organization high.

Tips to improve the happiness quotient

Take a diagnostic

The starting data point is always a dipstick survey or a pulse survey. This will help you understand the mindset, perception, and needs of your employees. Organizations are generally recommended to conduct a monthly pulse survey. Once you understand the needs of your employees, set up a framework of activities that will help address them. The takeaway is happy employees with a high happiness quotient, who are engaged and productive. Pulse surveys are customized surveys which wellbeing companies can design for your organization.

Appreciate employees

One of the important components in the framework is to develop a mechanism for employee appreciation. As an organization you may have a variable pay component in your remuneration model, however, this is not enough to keep your employees motivated. They may feel that they are contributing to team and job roles, however, their leaders are not appreciating their efforts. It is important that you devise a mechanism of creating an appreciation channel for your employees at the workplace.

Goal clarity

The present-day workforce is professional and direct—they expect clear expectations and quantifiable goals. As an HR leader, you must develop a career roadmap for them. Communicate this to them during their onboarding. This will set a realistic vision and quantifiable goals for the employee.

Feedback and frequency

Infrequent feedback can create chaos and mental turmoil for your employees. If you do not communicate with them, they will have no way of knowing where they are headed. Frequent performance feedback will help them understand where they are, the future trajectory that they have to achieve to meet their targets, and their areas of improvement. Feedback is not always positive, and we must approach constructive feedback with a solution.

Happy employees create a thriving business environment. What steps have you taken to improve the happiness quotient at your organization?