The pandemic brought about a significant change to the definition of ‘workplace’. Most of the world got forced to work from the confines of their homes. Although some part of the world has opened up now, there is a considerable share of the global workforce operating out of their homes and others operating out of conventional workplaces. Irrespective of the location, employee happiness is a critical factor that companies need to keep in mind. It’s something that good organizations try and gauge continuously and plan on optimizing. 

How to gauge and optimize workplace happiness in your company?

When you are working in the corporate sector, or an enterprise organization, being happy at times can be difficult due to all the pressure. However, employees must perform well daily for the business or company to work smoothly. But again, everyone – right from a lower-level employee to the owner of the company, needs to be happy to maintain optimum productivity. 

Several things influence the happiness of an organization’s workforce. It could be a bonus, appraisals, appreciation from the management, a hike, an internal promotion, team performance, etc. These things can make a huge impact on the happiness of an individual as well as their productivity. A team leader is always happy when the team performs well. Team member is happy when they get appreciated by their leader or managers.

Consequently, it is really important to have a finger on the pulse regarding employees’ happiness for an organization to be successful. The management has to make sure that they are being happier rather than upset, aggravated, or sad. Offering a healthy workplace should be a prime concern, and you should work accordingly to keep your employees happy. 

 But how do you measure workplace happiness? After all, it’s the first step that you can take toward optimizing it.

  1. Look for consistency in performance and attitude

Have a look at the performance now and then. Figure out how the performance graphs for each employee and look for any major turns in the trajectory. As long as it’s a positive trajectory, it’s all well and good. However, if you see a visible decrease in productivity, it is a possible sign that the employee is not as happy as they used to be. A good idea in such a case would be to ask the employees to take a break and start with a fresh perspective.

  1. Conduct surveys

Surveys are a tried and tested tool for getting insights into various processes. When it comes to measuring workplace happiness, it is always a good idea to allow your employees to fill out anonymous responses and only mention their team. With such a survey, you can easily gather valuable insights into how the company is doing and whether or not the employees support your process and their happiness with them. 

  1. Reviews

It goes without saying – it’s a good idea to keep these reviews anonymous. However, if you successfully establish a company culture that supports open ideas and opinions, you may do away with the need for anonymity. Irrespective, it is critical that the management asks for reviews on managers, team leaders, and even internal processes in place – both old and new. 

Once you have an idea about happiness levels in the workplace, the next step is to try and optimize it.

Here are a few ways that we suggest you try in the hope to augment workplace happiness for your employees.

  1. Always have a positive mindset

A positive mindset goes a long way in the corporate sector and even in life. A positive attitude will always motivate you in the right direction and will maximize your chances of being more successful at work. If you are part of a company’s management, ensuring that you keep a positive outlook on daily issues can help you prevent a lot of issues. A positive mindset helps you to cope with and tackle several pleasant and unpleasant scenarios, clients, or customers. This can decrease negative experiences for the employees and clients or customers.

A positive attitude is always an attraction for people. Having a positive attitude can help your employees gain the attention of their superiors and can even result in an appraisal or promotion for them. Hence, promote positive thinking in your organization.

  1. Be kind to the employees and help them in every way possible

A little kindness from the management can go a long way toward ensuring that the employees stay motivated and determined to work hard. Your employees or team members are bound to need help from time to time. Take the initiative and create a culture of helping them out without any expectations. Such a culture will always pay your company rich dividends. Also, by establishing such a culture, you can ensure that problems, in the long term, get solved among team members and there is no need for escalation in most cases.

  1. Establish a support system

An effective way for improving workplace happiness is to zero in on employees that are not feeling as well as you’d like them to and offer them a better experience. This can be accomplished by establishing a functioning support system for the employees. With a set mechanism in place that helps employees raise concerns and any issues that they may have, you can eventually decrease the probability of any employee feeling stressed in the first place. Therefore, try and ensure that you establish such a process and offer employees the room to speak up. 

  1. Involve your employees in important discussions

It is critical to ensure that your employees feel that they can make a significant difference in the progress of your company. If involving everyone and all teams in the decision-making process is not possible, a good idea would be to add a suggestion box in the office. Understand that employees who play an instrumental role in decision-making look forward to work every day because they feel valued. 

Also, it’s always possible that your employees may have great ideas about the company’s processes. Involving them in major discussions can ensure that they get the space to voice their opinions. 

  1. Establish open communication

The culture that you have about communication in your organization may end up shaping the better part of its future. If your employees feel that there is no channel of open communication with managers or higher management, they are bound to feel frustrated and eventually look for a workplace that offers such channels. Try and establish a culture that supports open communication at all levels of employees and teams. The space that a company offers to its employees to offer suggestions, make comments, and even offer feedback is bound to impact the workforce’s happiness in a major way. Therefore, ensure that you do not miss out on this area. 

  1. Express your appreciation

There is nothing that works better at improving workforce happiness than expressing appreciation and recognizing the employees’ hard work. Small attempts like sending an appreciation email, offering a free meal, or rolling out monthly awards can lead to strong workplace culture, improve workplace happiness, and even motivate employees to work harder. Although a salary increase is the most effective motivator that there can be, an organization can’t roll out hikes every other month. Therefore, it becomes even more vital for the management to establish processes where appreciation and rewarding quality work become a culture code.

Promoting a positive environment in the workplace is an effective method of boosting the overall performance of a company. Employee experience is a concept that is on the rise around the world and more and more organizations are realizing its importance in forecasting the business’ success. If you’re a manager or a team leader, implementing the tips mentioned above can help you measure as well as improve happiness levels at your workplace.