Why Employee Happiness Is Important
You can walk into a business and almost immediately tell if the employees are well taken care of and appreciated by their supervisors, management, and ownership. Why? Because well taken care of employees are happy and that happiness translates into employee engagement, customer care, team work, and a general environment of positivity.
Research supports this. A Columbia University study shows that the likelihood of job turnover at an organization with high employee satisfaction was 13.9 percent, whereas the probability of job turnover in companies with low employee satisfaction was 48.4 percent.
When people are happy they are more productive, stay with their employers longer, produce higher quality results, and project stronger levels of teamwork and task engagement. The Department of Economics at the University of Warwick found that happy workers are 12 percent more productive than the average worker, and unhappy workers are 10 percent less productive. In fact, unhappy employees cost American business over $300 billion each year. So it literally pays to make sure your employees are happy.
Workplace culture plays a HUGE role in this. Employers need to create environments that are welcoming, flexible and inclusive, encouraging, and happy. These type of environments inspire creativity, innovation, teamwork, and production. Employers need to focus on leaders that are motivating and inspiring their team members and that foster the positive climate.
Sometimes these things sound impossible, but with a shift in mindset towards the positive and “can do” attitude, it becomes the norm to be flexible, encouraging, empowering, and team driven.
*graphic courtesy of entrepreneur.com
If you were to share your top tip for how to create a happy employee culture, what would it be and why, Jorge?