While workplace burnout and stress have never been more prolific, science clearly demonstrates that happy employees are undeniably more productive.
Happy employees are also more invested in their employer, more likely to collaborate and think longer term regarding their career growth internally. Further, a happy employee is less likely to leave and more inclined to inspire also similar satisfaction in new hires, compounding already positive outcomes for the business.
Harvard Business Review’s pivotal 2015 article “Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive” outlined four particular workplace cultural guidelines for employers: encouraging social connections; expressing empathy; mentoring in a conscious and deliberate manner; and promoting open discussion, including criticism, so to build trust and strong relationships.
Comparable research from that same time also theorized that happiness [in the workplace] led to a 12% spike in productivity, “we work better when we’re happy” and why positive work cultures are more productive, ideology which remains as freshly relevant today as HBR’s research persists in its circulation: almost seven years after its original publication, the article’s argument for worker satisfaction and fulfilment should in fact become a logical corporate strategy, more than ever now as the world’s workforce readjusts to an endemic covid reality and with “workers' daily stress reach[ing] a record high, increasing from 38% in 2019 to 43% in 2020.”
More recent commentary echoes that happy employees are more expressive, more committed and more energetic: “Employee happiness is one of the most important factors in running a successful, profitable company. Happy and engaged employees tend to miss less work, perform better, and support company innovation. When employees are happy, loyal, and engaged, company profits are higher as staff turnover is much lower; replacing an employee can cost up to 33% of their annual salary. Unhappy employees cost U.S. companies up to $550 billion annually.”
Worker contentment, the presence of delight in the process of effort and collaboration, fosters a sense of pride, camaraderie and feeling of belonging which should never be dismissed as gratuitous because worker joy literally translates into lower turnover, higher retention and less incidents of sickness and absence. Worker happiness is cost effective and, most important to the bottom line, profit inducing.
Happy teams are never happy accidents when they are thoughtfully built by giving the same priority to the human experience as to organisational development