8 Steps to Foster Employee Happiness

The most successful organizations are led by its leaders, but driven by its employees.

Are you having a problem with high turnover? Are your top performers leaving in droves? Are there performance issues? The key to overcoming these challenges is employee happiness.

You might think that happiness is irrelevant in the workplace but nothing could be further from the truth. Top leaders and companies care about the people and the culture they exist in because they know they hold the key to the company's ultimate success. Thomas Wright, a Kansas State University researcher, Jon Wefald Leadership Chair in Business Administration, and professor of management, found that "when employees have high levels of psychological well-being and job satisfaction, they perform better and are less likely to leave their job -- making happiness a valuable tool for maximizing organizational outcomes." Happy employees make for more productive employees and that affects the bottom line - something vitally important in this troubled economic climate.

Many studies have shown that the advantages of happy employees on businesses are:

* Increased productivity and quality of work
* Lower absenteeism, stress and burnout
* Lower turnover
* Being a coveted place to work
* Higher sales and customer satisfaction
* Increased creativity and innovation
* Being more flexible and open to change
* Better stock performances and bottom line

So, how do you, as a leader, encourage happiness in your employees? Here are 8 steps to get you started:

1. Be happy yourself! Happiness is contagious. Happy leaders make happy employees.

Action: Take five uninterrupted minutes and think about it. How do I intend to feel today? Set your intentions on how you want to experience your day (i.e. calm, ease, joy, positive, happy, etc.) Check in at the end of the day and see how much of your intended happiness actually showed up.

Action: Take five minutes at the end of your day and write down three things that made you happy that day. This is connecting with your inner happiness and highlighting what you are grateful and thankful for. This has been proven to make people happier if done consistently for a week and the effects have been known to last for up to three months.

2. Foster positive emotions. Foster an environment which encourages positive emotions like enthusiasm and interest. Interested employees generally find their work meaningful because they perceive their work as having value to the organization. They feel they are a valuable part of the team and are making an overall contribution to the profitability of the organization.

Action: Affirm and acknowledge your employee in every conversation and connect what you appreciate to the value it affords your organization.

3. Limit negative emotions. Negative emotions like apathy, sadness, and stress hurt the bottom line of companies. Thomas Wright sampled managers with average salaries of approximately $65 000 and found that "being psychologically distressed could cost the organization roughly $75 a week per person in lost productivity. With 10 employees that translates to $750 per week in performance variance; for 100 employees the numbers are $7 500 per week or $390 000 per year." Be observant of negative emotions which might harm the work environment and take steps to minimize them.

Action: Coach your employees to write a vision of what work and life would be like without the unhelpful stress. Then ask them "What is getting in the way of realizing this vision?" Once they answer this question you can help coach them through the barrier and change the habit.

4. Promote humor and fun. Allow opportunities for colleagues to get to know each other. When employees like each other they are happier. Have celebratory gatherings, birthday parties, picnics, sports teams, games between competing teams, and charity events. Such activities foster interaction and communication between co-workers which in turn will allow them to feel more connected to one another.

Action: Ask your team of employees "What is one thing we can do to have more fun together?" Implement one of the ideas within a month.

Action: Call for an "employee happiness" task force who meets without management and creates a continuous plan for employee team bonding and building.

5. Celebrate results. Acknowledge your employees for their successes, achievements, and results. Do this during performance reviews and publicly. When people know that they are appreciated for their contributions to the organization, when they can use their strengths every day, and when they know they make a difference, they are happier.

Action: Begin each meeting with "What's going well? What are you accomplishing? What are your jazzed about?" questions.

Action: Ask for volunteers to create a "Rewards and Celebration" system for your organization.

6. Offer opportunities for work/life balance. Conflicts between work and life affect everyone. When such conflicts arise, apathy sets in and employees might come in late, call in sick, or take extra long lunches. Eventually they will quit and that costs the company a lot of money. Experts have estimated that it costs between 93% and 200% of an employee's salary to replace him or her. Smart leaders will take steps to remove such work/life conflicts. Strategies that can retain employees include flexible schedules, extended leaves, job sharing, on-site daycare, eldercare assistance, and concierge services.

Action: Listen to the needs, desires, and wants of the individual employee and customize a benefit to meet that employee's needs.

7. Ensure company communications are open and honest. Make sure company newsletters are not press releases or office memos. Make them personal and heartfelt to foster trust and openness between staff and management. For that matter, make sure that press release and office memos are personal and heartfelt too.

Action: Make a personal phone call or visit to each employee weekly or at least monthly.
Remember the first question: "What's going well?" Then, acknowledge or affirm their accomplishments.

Action: Contribute to the team by participating in the meetings. See yourself as one member of the team.

8. Create a highly spirited "Learning" environment. The key to your leadership success lies in creating a "learning" environment, a new kind of business architecture that promotes a culture in which employees can learn, solve problems, challenge one another's perspectives, and go beyond their present knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

A "learning" environment promotes honesty, direct communication, safety to speak one's opinion without negative consequences, and the ability to recreate ideas and solutions in one's own context. The environment emboldens employees to play with new skills and test new attitudes in a "safe" setting with colleagues.

Action: Put personal and professional development first. Have all professional development and learning point to the company's mission.

Action: Ask "So what? We have learned this – so what difference does it make in my ability to perform and reach my desired results?"

Remember, that you cannot force your employees to be happy - they are ultimately responsible for their own happiness - but you can foster an environment where it's easy to be happy. That is your responsibility as their leader. Be happy!