your employees

How do you make your employees happier at work? 

This is a question which every successful business owner should strive to achieve on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. 

For this reason, here are 6 new ideas to make your employees happier. 

  1. Celebrate wins
  2. Never punish when your team fails
  3. Provide honest and transparent feedback
  4. Set realistic workloads and deadlines
  5. Promote health and wellness
  6. Freshen the office with a facelift. 

Read to digest good advice? Let’s jump into the first point…

  1. Celebrate wins

Appreciating people’s efforts and giving them their due recognition for the wins, no matter the size, are important for team morale and for fostering individual job satisfaction in the office. But more crucial than that is appreciating and celebrating everyone’s wins and parts they played. There’s no place for playing favourites in a happy, healthy workplace.

Appreciation and recognition are important in reaching job satisfaction. Fun rewards are great, but a pat on the back goes a long way. Once you have celebrated as a team, it’s then important to get back to work and continue helping the people you help.

  1. Never punish when your team fail

Failure is an inevitable part of life, it’s how we grow whether in our personal or professional lives. 

The whole idea of History is to look back at what didn’t work and how it was changed. In the book ‘How Google Works’ by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, a chapter discussed the importance of failure. 

They said that “Google does not punish its people”, instead “they get a pat on the back and an ‘at least you tried’ comment.” They added, “if your team are not failing, it means they are not trying to make things happen. Most big organisations act with an aversion to change and lack the ability to try and fail at new things”.

Now, if we take a step back for a moment and think about what Google have been able to do in their 20+ years in business, you’ll realise:

  1. How incredible they are as an organisation and… 
  2. How much we can learn from them.  
  1. Provide honest and transparent feedback

Giving and receiving feedback should be part of any healthy, cohesive workplace. Making it a part of the team culture will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page, and everyone has the same expectations. 

Foster transparency and consistency through honest, respectful feedback.

Nobody can explain the imperative qualities of honesty and transparency in a workplace better than Ray Dalio. This is a terrific TED Talk he gave: 

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  1. Set realistic workloads and deadlines

Can a company afford for any percentage of its workforce to disengage? One way to avoid this costly mistake is to manage stress levels and unnecessary pressures being heaped onto an individual’s shoulders. 

Balance job descriptions with fair, commensurate pay across the board. Too many times, there are organisations with lopsided roles. Some people have too much to do and others don’t have enough tasks.

  1. Promote health and wellness

Promoting a healthy living in a workspace can provide a host of benefits to the productivity and happiness of your team. 

Here are some examples of ways you can do this: 

  • Bring in a yoga instructor: Having weekly yoga classes is a great way to manage employee stress and wellbeing
  • Offer gym memberships: The gym is one of the best places to stay fit and healthy, so promoting this will not only promote participation, but also team collaboration and bonding. 
  • Host mindfulness seminars: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” Benjamin Franklin
  • Hire an onsite barista: teas and coffees can be very healthy for you and providing one free drink a day can make happiness stay
  • Buy office fruit: Fruit is high in vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin C, dietary fibre, and folate.

Encouraging and leading the team in physical activities will inspire us to respect management leadership and will cultivate team buy-in.

  1. Freshen the office with a facelift

Refresh the environment’s décor to fit modern lifestyles and needs, such as adding some extra powerpoints for USB plugs, some splashes of art with on-trend colours that inspire vision and creativity, or some styling furniture features.

Rethink employee workstations and offer options, such as standing desks, desk bikes and treadmills to continue health and wellbeing into the workspaces. Provide quiet spaces, rooms, or pods to get away from the rat-race of the communal areas for some peace or to take important client calls, etc.

Getting the office culture just right is key to a happy workforce. Encourage individual personalities that are respectful. Promote consideration and the inclusion of everyone, and establish a zero-tolerance policy for any behaviour even remotely related to bullying or disrespect. Ensure that special work projects and career opportunities are shared. Uphold equality in the workplace.

All of the above will help your team value you more and this may contribute to better job satisfaction and overall happiness.

The bottom line       

If we are happy at work, we are more productive, creative creatures. We have the desire to work harder, and achievements come easier to us. Everyone has played both parts of the happy camper and the disgruntled employee. 

We all know there is a direct correlation between workplace morale and the company’s balance sheet. And any company worth its salt knows it too.

Alistair Knight is a writer for Vita-C, a website designed to improve the health, happiness, and wellness of all. In his spare time, Alistair is an avid reader, writer, and sportsman. You can follow him on twitter here

Happy employees stock photo by Pressmaster/Shutterstock