20 May 15 ways to make employees happy

Originally posted May 2, 2014 by Dan Cook on www.benefitspro.com.

You can offer employees a lavish buffet lunch onsite every day, bring in a masseuse on Fridays and hold the company picnic at Disney World. But at the end of the day, if you have the wrong people in the wrong jobs, you will still not have a happy workforce.

That is the message from social-recognition software provider Globoforce in a white paper titled “The Science of Happiness.” Most of the material cited in the paper comes from sources other than Globoforce. However, the company teases out tips for creating a culture of happiness based on its research of others’ research. And therein one can find tasty tidbits of advice that may begin to transform your workplace into a happy one.

“HR leaders encounter a lot of advice about how to manage culture — to increase engagement, decrease turnover, and drive recruitment. But when it comes to creating a culture employees love and don’t want to leave, employee happiness is the metric that really matters,” Globoforce says in a preamble to its data and advice. “Happy employees are what make a culture great.”

The paper says happy employees:

• stay twice as long in their jobs as their least happy colleagues;

• believe they are achieving their potential twice as much;

• spend 65 percent more time feeling energized;

• are 58 percent more likely to go out of the way to help their colleagues;

• identify 98 percent more strongly with the values of their organization;

• are 186 percent more likely to recommend their organization to a friend.

“Unlike culture itself, we have hard numbers on the science of employee happiness and how to directly increase it. It all leads to one conclusion: concentrating your efforts on making employees happy is the most direct and powerful way to impact your organizational culture,” Globoforce says.

Now, to the tips for putting a smile on your workers’ face.

5 ways to build alignment

1. Pay closer attention to job-person fit.

2. Fire people who don’t fit your culture.

3. Help employees find greater meaning in your values.

4. Show workers how your company fits into a bigger picture.

5. Cultivate more trust and flexibility into your policies.

5 ways to build positivity

1. Broadcast personal and team successes.

2. Offer fast, positive feedback.

3. Open up multidirectional communication lines.

4. Offer resources and emotional support.

5. Encourage employees to express gratitude.

5 ways to build progress

1. Set clear, measurable and achievable organizational goals.

2. Show employees how they fit into the bigger picture.

3. Offer training for mastery of new and existing skills.

4. Respect individualism.

5. Reward excellence and effort.