What is work happiness?
Job satisfaction, or work happiness, contributes to the growth and financial health of the organization. Many studies show the same picture: happy employees are more productive, less often ill and take better care of their customers. Employers benefit from it work happiness to increase for their employees.
Work happiness is, according to former Google employee Mo Gawdat, to be captured in a formula . Happiness = your perception of the events in your life or your expectations in life. That sounds logical. But applying this formula does not yet produce happiness at work. For that, according to Gawdat, three other factors also play an important role: purpose, transparency and compassion.
With purpose, it's about your work tasks fitting your personal values. While you can be transparent about what is playing out in your life. And compassion is about kindness between colleagues.
To increase work happiness within the organization, it is therefore important not only to focus on the tasks or role of the employee. Things like the office atmosphere and the work–life balance also play an important role. In addition, employers can look at the work experience of each staff member. An entry-level employee preferably wants to be challenged as much as possible within their job. When this is lacking, this acts as a brake on his or her work happiness and ultimately on productivity. Meanwhile, a more experienced employee may have more need to spend time with their family. What each employee finds important in their work is personal.
How can you practically increase work happiness within the organization?
What is the first step to determine work happiness within your organization? In any case, start by having a conversation with your employees. See whether there are alignments between the organization's objectives and the employees' personal goals. Having an open dialogue is important before you can adjust the work situation accordingly. Using the following three focus areas, you can increase work happiness within the organization:
1. Determine your goal
It is important to establish from the start your vision of what work happiness means for your organization. What do you want to achieve with your employees' work happiness? And which problems do you want to solve?
After all: with happy employees you get happy customers, which leads to a financially healthy organization. See which employees in your organization can further increase workplace happiness within the company.
2. Create tangible change for employees
With an action plan you can immediately improve happiness at work among employees. Think of practical actions such as workshops around happiness at work for employees, but also activities that have been devised by the employees themselves and can be carried out.
3. Ensure engagement within the organization
After you have completed the preparatory phase, it remains important that work happiness becomes part of business operations. You can apply it within various processes: from onboarding to learning and development. By continuously applying this within the organization you create more job satisfaction and a better employee experience. Optionally facilitate this in a variable compensation model.
