Unhappy employees can hurt your business more than you realise.

According to a Gallup study, actively disengaged employees cost the United States 450 billion USD to 550 billion USD per year. Worse, only about 30% of US workers were engaged in their jobs.

This data suggests over half of US employees aren’t passionate about what they do, and that only about one-third are working at full potential.

Here’s the truth: To increase work output, you need to improve employee happiness as well.

• If your people are happy, they get a 12% increase in productivity.
• If they’re unhappy, they become 10% less productive.

Companies that have plenty of happy employees have thrice the revenue growth compared to those with many unhappy employees. They also outperform the stock market by a factor of three. If you look at their employee turnover, it’s half that of organisations that have many unhappy employees.

Clearly, improving employee happiness drives your business forward. So what should you do? Here are a few proven tips on how to increase employee happiness at work.

Find the baseline

You need to get a sense of your current happiness levels. Trying to improve employee happiness without benchmarking is futile because you’ll have no idea if your efforts are actually working.

It’s crucial to collect data around employee happiness and engagement to:

• Understand where your team is at.
• Identify areas for improvement.
• Plan for future efforts.

If you don’t already send out employee happiness surveys, you should. And send them out more frequently too.

Also consider stay interviews to get a pulse on your team’s feelings.

Develop trust in your organisation

Two things are present in companies where employees are happy:

• Trust
• Respect

Leaders often say: “We trust and empower our employees.” But when an employee needs a laptop, more than a dozen people have to approve that laptop.

For the employee, the words sound right, but the level of approval needed to get that laptop gives the impression that the company doesn’t really trust them.

Trust your employees to do whatever they think is right when serving your customers. This’ll make them feel great. Because trust is reciprocal; to gain trust, you should give trust as well.

Promote fairness

What truly erodes trust in a company is when employees feel that they’re being treated unfairly – regardless of their rank, experience, tenure, age, or job category.

One of the companies that gets fairness right is Salesforce, who found that men and women in the same job with the same level of proficiency were earning different amounts of money. To address the issue, they calculated the difference and invests millions each year to balance it out.

So if your employees are voicing concerns about being untreated unfairly, listen and look into it. If you’ve been conducting employee happiness surveys, this should be easy to detect.

And should you find inequality, resolve it. Championing fairness will help you improve employee happiness.

Learn to listen

To be a listener who connects with all types of people, we have to unlearn some things. We’ve all been taught to engage in active listening and make eye contact. That’s not listening.

Repeating what the person says. That’s not listening either.

Being humble and always looking for the best idea possible among your employees- that’s what listening is. And employees can feel whether you’re doing that or not.

Your people want to know: When they talk to you and share an idea, did you consider it when you made a decision? Remember – the one thing that everybody appreciates and wants when they’re speaking is to know that what they say matters so much, you might actually change your mind.

Otherwise, what was the point of the conversation?

Prioritise wellness

Wellness isn’t just a subsidised gym membership; it should also involve mental wellness. Often overlooked, wellness is a powerful factor in improving employee happiness.

Our basic needs (e.g. rest, nutrition, stability, psychological safety) have to be met before we can think about higher-level needs like being engaged at work.

Think about your team members. Do they seem healthy and balanced? Are they stressed about matters you have control over, like their processes or your expectations.

Your next step might be to address these factors.

Focus on feedback

You won’t know if your employees are happy without them giving you their feedback.

This may be hard to accept but respecting your people enough to listen to their constructive criticism and acting on that feedback will make a huge difference to your company culture.

If you’re thinking: “But X isn’t something I can change,” then it’s important to share why that is with your employees. Why? Because it shows you’re listening to them even if you can’t do anything directly to address their feedback.

Likewise, you should also be giving feedback during your one-on-one meetings. This is your chance to reinforce behaviours that exemplify your company values.

Recognise contributions

When was the last time you expressed appreciation to individual members of your team? Probably the most influential factor that raises employee engagement is recognition for someone’s work.

Highly engaged organisations are far more likely to recognise employees for a job well done. Increase employee recognition and you’re likely to improve employee happiness as well.

Foster innovation

When you work to create a culture that celebrates experimentation, accepts failure, and is continuously iterating, you engage employees by encouraging them to think bigger and better.

If you’re hesitant to give your people opportunities build their skills in case they leave for another employer, don’t be. Employees are actually more likely to leave if they feel stifled and stagnant.

As it turns out, when employees are focused on positive growth opportunities at their current role, they’re more likely to stay engaged and happy, and less likely to look for another job.

Be transparent by default

If you’re keeping information to avoid drama, your plan will likely fail. You can’t build trust with secrets and poor communication.

Being a transparent leader fosters trust in your organisation, which leads to a sense of belonging and stability. It also gives employees the necessary context to understand how their own role connects with the wider team and stakeholders.

Go remote

Videoconferencing company Owl Labs surveyed 1,200 US workers and found that employees who work remotely are happier and stay with their employers longer than on-site employees. The remote workers reported having less stress, more focus, and better work-life balance.

More proof exists out there establishing the same thing: to improve employee happiness, give your team the option to work from home.

If you’re just starting out on your business but wish to invest in employee engagement from the get-go, you can form a remote team of specialists instead of hiring locally. That’s where we come in.

Remote Workmate enables efficiency-conscious, overwhelmed, or struggling entrepreneurs to experience confidence, convenience, a stronger sense of control, and less stress overall.

We’ll also cut your employment costs by up to 70%, boost your productivity, win back your time, and supercharge your bottom line.

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