Should organizations invest time on employee happiness in the workplace?

In a dynamic business environment, companies ought to devote greater effort to enhance their capabilities and it must not be forgotten that the success and the competing power of the organization depends on factors such as employee commitment, level of motivation, satisfaction and innovative human resources. Happiness is one of the most fundamental pursuits of humans. Employee happiness is becoming a critical topic of discussion among CEO’s and in boardrooms. The key question of interest is; as to why organizations should prioritize and invest time on employee happiness in the workplace; for enhanced organizational performance? The author has conducted an exploratory study to investigate the relationship between employee happiness and the workplace outcomes.

Whether you call it happiness, job satisfaction or engagement, it is shockingly infrequent in todays’ rapidly changing workplace. As a matter of fact the three factors mentioned are correlated. Happiness will lead to job satisfaction, thus consequential workplace engagement which will boost company performance.

Happiness is a two way process between the employee and the employer. In an employee empowered organization, managements’ responsibility comes to create and foster an environment in which it is perceptible that employee input is desired and cultivated. The organization will attempt to foster happiness in the workplace and in return the workers will be more engaged in their work. When organizations create an environment that enables and encourages workers to stay engaged, happiness is cultivated. Professor Oswald mentioned that Companies like Google have invested a great deal on employee happiness and consequentially employee satisfaction has increased, increasing productivity of happy workers by around 12% (Happiness and Productivity). Vice versa, happier workers will be engaged in doing what they love. There is a strong relationship between workplace engagement and company performance. According to research conducted in Australia by The Right Management, it demonstrated that 52% of happy workers, who saw their organizations as top performers in the industry, were highly engaged (Right Management, 2009). Engaged employees Will have an influence on the level of satisfaction in customers. They will recognize the need to persuade customers and deliver value-driven goods and services. Secondarily, customer loyalty is achieved which is a direct correlation of customer satisfaction; this will simultaneously be directed by higher profits and sustained growth.

Furthermore, Investing time and effort on employee happiness at work is a productivity goldmine.  Happiness is the positive mindset which enables action to maximize performance. The iOpener Institute based in Oxford UK has conducted a robust research on what happiness is at work and their pragmatic data has revealed that a happy worker is a high performing employee. The data gathered from 32,000 employee’s shows that the happier employees are more likely to be ‘on task’ 80% of their working week, which is four days per week. On the other hand the less content employees are likely to only be on task 40% of the time, which is two days per week (Pryce and Lindsay). Through a primary research questionnaire given to 50 individuals, employees were asked if their level of happiness could influence their productivity; a notable 78% of workers agreed to the correlation between happiness and productivity. It is clear that the level of happiness in employees is directly related to the quality of their performance; conversely more content employees will have an optimistic effect on the functioning of the company.  For instance, take Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to work for in 2014; these highly rated organizations reported an average increase in revenue of 22.2% (BLS). Dr. Sgroi stated that happier workers will use their time efficiently, increasing the pace at which they can work without sacrificing quality. There will be a positive correlation with motivation, job involvement and organizational citizenship behavior (Judge and Hulin). According to studies, it was stated that 66% of happily engaged employees mentioned that their employment cultivated creativity and 3% of the employees were not as committed (Corporate Leadership Council, 2004). Happiness will certainly have an impact on the level of innovation within the person and improve the level of productivity in the organization.

A greatly engaged workers are more likely to influence customers to think highly of their products. According to the research conducted by The Right Management a staggering 88% of the engaged employees had an impact on the level of satisfaction in customers, on the contrarily only 51% of disengaged employees were able to stage-manage the customers. Moreover, according to a Gallup Research conducted on the German Workforce, it was proven that only about 30% of disengaged employees are thriving in the workplace compared to the overwhelming 62% of engaged employees who are successful in the place of work (Nink, 2015). Workplace engagement has been a contributing factor to employee stress which could lead to other detrimental consequences such as suicide, unnecessary leave of absence and workplace conflicts. Investing time on employee wellbeing could have a positive effect for the organization as a whole.

Retaining a highly engaged workforce makes good business sense. Cultivating happiness in the workplace will result in a more loyal and committed workforce. Happier employees who are engaged in the organization are 4 times less likely to leave within the next four years and twice as likely to stay for at least 5 years (The Right Management, 2012). According to a comprehensive study by ‘Ipsos’, they found that employees with the highest level of loyalty to their organization also characterizes themselves as the happiest. If turnover levels are low, loyalty levels are high and vice versa. Not only would developing a more loyal workforce result in employee self-fulfillment but also, provide the organization with a competitive edge.

Discretionary effort which is an outcome from a committed and loyal employee, is the extent to which employees offer extra effort to their work. It involves mental and emotional commitment to the organization. The heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization will influence him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to their work (Mulhern, Peltier and Dahl). A Strongly committed, happy workforce will show an augmented percentage of discretionary effort in the work place.

The other side of the argument which leads to the question; as to why companies should not invest time on employee happiness?

Based on McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, it is understandable that Theory X employees are reluctant to forms of engagement; Theory X colleagues exhibit a more anti-social persuasive approach in the workplace. Taking Theory X employees into consideration, investing time on their happiness would be a waste of time since these employees generally have negative attitudes about work and are rather motivated by tangible rewards and need top-down direction to be productive (Russ).

Furthermore, satisfied employees who are already happy in their workplace will be comfortable with what they do and be unwilling to change course. Not all employees will feel the need to have strong desires for creativity and accomplishments in the workplace since they seem to have already achieved self-fulfillment. Happiness may act as a barrier to progress.

It is comprehensible from the below diagram that certain employees with stronger levels of satisfaction could cloud the level of performance to achieve a task. It could result in a loss of key talent. They will shun away from taking on new challenges once they establish themselves as happy, satisfied workers.

                                                                                           

Morever, according to research conducted by the department of psychology at the Yale University, research indicated that high levels of positive feelings sometimes lead to negative outcomes like drug consumption, binge eating and may lead individuals to neglect threats in the workplace (Gruber, Mauss and Tamir).

The other concern on employee happiness is that what constitutes happiness to one person may not constitute happiness to another. Some employees might have a very indistinct idea of what they want to attain, so they would jump from one job to another probing for ideal happiness, investing time and money on these unpredictable employees would cost the business a fortune. An employee may be more satisfied with one satisfying item whereas the other employee may be less satisfied with the same item. For these reasons, organizations should analyse employee happiness from a large perspective (Aydin and Ceylan). Moreover, Maslows’ Hierarchy of Needs explains how one does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied. Attitudes and expectation of employees could differ. And thus factors affecting the level of happiness could have dissimilar levels of impact on the employees.

In Conclusion, considering the above reasons; it is clear that employee attitude typically reflect the morale of the organization. Happy employees are emotionally committed to working hard, demonstrating initiative and expending extra discretionary effort, and doing so in coalition with strategic priorities to the organization forward. Every organization should sanction strategies that strengthen employee morale. It is been observed that one cannot attract, retain and engage employees by only offering high wage rates or tangible rewards. Critically analysing and taking the above arguments into concern, there are significant factors which could have an impact on the employees’ level of happiness. Happiness being a basic pursuit of humans, companies should with no doubt invest on strategies and measures to create a happy, engaged workforce; the end result is a more sustained increase in employee engagement that drives competitive success and bottom-line results.