Why should you measure employee happiness? Many companies invest time and resources into monitoring the moods of their workforce because of the major impact that workplace happiness can have on their business. Happier employees are less likely to leave the company, are more engaged and more productive. They also tend to be healthier, therefore reducing the impact of absenteeism on your organization.
Understanding if your workforce is happy – or unhappy – is key to implementing a plan to improve overall happiness. The following are examples of some of the ways companies like yours are measuring employee happiness to guide their decision making:
- Conduct regular surveys. While you may measure employee satisfaction on an annual basis, consider implementing more regular surveys to keep a pulse on the happiness of your team. Monthly, or even weekly surveys can give you a more accurate picture. Keep all survey responses anonymous to ensure your employees feel comfortable giving honest answers.
- Ask questions daily. Use a survey or polling tool to ask your employees a quick question related to their happiness each day. This question can be as simple as “How are you feeling today?” or “What should we stop doing as a company to be more successful?”. The answers to these quick questions make for an effective way to check in on employee moods.
- Monitor social media. Employers can not only monitor customer sentiment via social media – they can also monitor the social media mentions from their employees. Use a social media monitoring tool to better understand employee sentiment and what they post about your company online.
- Make use of software. There are plenty of platforms on the market that your organization can use to track employee happiness and engagement in real time via surveys, daily questions and feedback. This data can be monitored and analyzed by supervisors to drive changes.
- Ask for suggestions. Hold an open forum to ask your employees how your organization and upper management can improve their job satisfaction. If something causes an employee to be stressed or unhappy, take the time to problem solve and find a better solution.
Don’t underestimate the impact of employee happiness on your business. Since happiness levels can affect productivity, absences, creativity and engagement, managers should monitor changes in employee satisfaction carefully. By measuring happiness using one of the above methods and regularly taking stock of overall employee satisfaction, you can begin to make the necessary changes to improve happiness levels among your workforce.