I’m guessing you have already guessed what we’re going to talk about today through the title. Yes, it’s none other than ‘Employee Happiness,’ an essential part of the larger umbrella of Employee Engagement. A topic that has actually been stealing the limelight in many HR discussions and forums.
So are your employees happy in their workplace? How many of us have actually asked ourselves this question? While trying to keep up with the daily rat race, we tend to forget such core questions. Besides it’s also one of those questions that can throw up some pretty unwanted revelations! So for some, it may be best kept aside!
When we think about employee engagement, there are so many questions that come to mind. Like, what truly make employees happy? How do we know that they are happy? How do they feel about their working here? What do they think about the organisation?
So how do we get the answers to our questions? Simple, by asking them! Mind reading may take some time to master, so it’s best to ask them. After all, they would know best what makes them happy!
How do we go about doing this? By taking suggestions and ideas from the employees itself and asking them for feedback.
What’s that one thing that they all look for? Any guesses?
Culture and Happiness
Employees like to be treated like a family. They need to get a feeling of belongingness from the organisation. The more the organisation practices an open culture where it values every employee, the stronger the feeling gets. And we all know what more belongingness leads to. A happier workplace and eventually higher productivity.
This is the power the culture of an organisation can have. Hence it is essential to keep a tab on your culture and ensure that it is employee friendly. It must contribute to the organisation’s success. Just conducting employee engagement initiatives year on year while fostering a bad culture won’t really add up to much!
The Employee Engagement Strategy
If you and your organisation believe in employee engagement, it is very important that you have an employee engagement strategy in place. For that, you need to know where you currently are in the minds of employees and where you wish to be.
An employee engagement strategy is built on a combination of what your people desire and what their needs are. It should be designed keeping these aspects in mind at all points of time rather than basing it on standard employee engagement practices being deployed across other organisations. Why, because these may not apply to your organisation. Hence it should be custom made for your employees. That is what will guarantee its effectiveness.
Keeping everyone happy
Are they more engaged now?
You can have multiple initiatives happening for engaging employees. But if at the end of each, you don’t connect to find out how they felt after it, there’s no point. An employee engagement plan might look like a fun thing to design and execute, but frankly it’s a huge responsibility. It’s something that the organisation is spending large sums on and if it’s not reaping results then there’s not much point in pursuing it. Therefore gauging the level of employee happiness post conducting the engagement initiative is prime. Taking feedback post an inititive also gives you insights into what you can change to make your activities a super hit!
The Initial Days
Employee engagement wasn’t given much importance initially. When it came to cost cutting, it was always one of the first thing to get eliminated. But lately, the scenario has changed. Organisations now realise that their employees are their most important asset and they need to be kept happy. After all, if you take good care of your internal customers, your external customers will be taken good care of.
So are you taking care of your employees? Do they have a feeling of belongingness to your organisation? Are they happy?
Think about it…
If you need help with any of this, you can always get in touch with us. We have some interesting ideas that we can share with you which can help you engage your employees better. We form an engaged bunch and we’re sure we can help you do the same.