“Choose a job you like and you won’t have to work a day in your life,” asserts Confucius in his famous phrase. But what happens when motivation is surpassed by stress, deadlines start to fill your inbox, and work suddenly consumes your time out of the office?
Each day, from our office or coworking jobs, we as employees have the opportunity to show the duality of our behaviour, firstly because of the physical and mental exhaustion that the job involves, and secondly, by achieving the day’s goals, we increase our well-being and feeling of achievement.
When talking about “happiness management”, we’re referring to an organisation’s ability to offer their employees strategies that allow them to link their personal purpose to their business activity, in order to align their performance with the company’s goals.
In this sense, according to a research carried out by the Harvard Business Review and Gallup (United States, 2017), happy employees cause 31% more productivity, 44% more employee retention, 300% more innovation, and can reduce by 125% the burnout syndrome.
Expert Nick Marks suggests five guidelines to promote individual happiness which provide a first approach for talent managers on how to motivate high performance teams. The first guideline is to connect with others, be active, pay attention to one’s environment, always be learning and be a caring, helpful person.
Challenge accepted!
When organisations accept the challenge of offering more value to their employees to avoid talent drain and increase their engagement, they decide not only to focus on tangible indicators but also for these to become more relevant.
Among these new proposals, the following are the most prominent:
– Work-life balance
– Improvement in work environment security
– Better access to health programmes
– Participation in corporate social responsibility actions
– Transversal activities between different groups and departments
– Transparency in all organisational levels
– Positive work environment based on effective communication
