Employee happiness is of paramount importance for the growth of a company. Happy employees contribute to higher productivity and this positively affects the growth of the company. When employees are unhappy they become unmotivated and this has an adverse effect on the growth of the company.
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the world into a deep crisis and slowly economies are recovering and stabilizing. The workplace has taken a serious hit forcing companies to seek alternative work arrangements. Thus work from home has become the new norm. Whatever may be the situation, keeping the employees happy and productive is vital for the growth of the company.
Why is employee happiness important?
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Mahatma Gandhi. This is so very true of every workplace.
When the employees are happy, the workplace enlivens and becomes a place of harmony. Studies have shown that employees tend to perform better and make the right decisions when they are in a harmonious environment. A happy environment creates greater morale and this reflects on the performance of the employees. On the other hand, in a stressed and anxiety filled workplace you can see the employees getting distracted and erring in the decision-making. Happy employees take decisions after careful thought.
When employees are happy, there are lesser chances of them quitting the job than when they are unhappy. In other words, employer retention is affected when employees are unhappy. This will create a faster turnover of employees, forcing you to keep hiring new employees instead of focusing on the existing workplace.
Happiness is an infectious emotion and is, therefore, likely to spread throughout the team. This will have a positive effect on the entire team and will boost the relationship among the employees. Happiness will increase the energy levels of the team and lead to better performance.
In general, happy employees are more loyal and committed to the company and help to motivate their colleagues to perform better. This would lead to greater productivity.
How to Keep Employees Happy and increase Productivity?
There are different ways to keep your employees happy and productive. In this article, we will look at 8 effective ways to keep your employees happy and productive.
1. Create a flexible work environment
A flexible work schedule creates a vibrant workplace. When employees enjoy great flexibility at work, they are able to properly balance between their professional and personal lives.
The freedom to work in such an environment will lead to greater happiness and this, in turn, enhances productivity. The advantage of flexible work schedules is that employees are less stressed and more refreshed to perform their duties. This creates a happy work atmosphere.
2. Provide for greater Career Mobility
Most employees look for career growth and lack of career mobility will discourage them from putting their best efforts at the workplace. The workplace should be a place that encourages career growth. If employees feel that their efforts will not enable them to move up the ladder, they may become demotivated. This will force them to look for better opportunities elsewhere. No employee would be happy at a job that does not provide career growth.
Therefore, providing better opportunities for career growth is very important for most employees. When you provide this opportunity they will work with greater freedom, take risks, come up with new ideas, seek the support of their mentors, and sharpen their skills to move up the ladder.
3. Appreciate Employees and Reward them for their hard work
The hard work put in by an employee or their achievements have to be recognized and appreciated with a reward. Whether big or small, the skills of an employee have to be appreciated and rewarded. This creates a sense of being wanted and motivates the employees to strive harder.
The appreciation can be handled in different ways:
– Have regular meetings to recognize and appreciate performers
– Hold reward functions to recognize this achievement
– Instruct Managers to recognize achievers irrespective of their ranks
– Team meetings should be a forum to recognize such achievers
4. Enhance the Benefits to employees
This is a very effective way to keep the employees happy. When you instill the feeling that the company cares for its employees, they are more likely to feel comfortable and become productive. Serious thought has to be given to decide on the benefits that accrue to an employee. A strong communication has to be built with the employees to arrive at a benefit package that is comprehensive and beneficial to all employees. You can communicate with employees, hold surveys, get regular feedback and finally arrive at a benefit package that is wholesome and accepted by the employees.
5. Don’t overwork the employees
This is very important. When you overwork your employees, you are inviting a stressful environment. Managers may find it easy to instruct their workers to stay late or skip lunch/dinner or eat at the desk to save time to complete a project. This is a counter-productive practice that would push the worker towards burnout.
So, what should you do? The best solution is to encourage your employee to take a break from the work schedule. Managers may not accept this as they value time spent in the office as a measure of a job well done. But then if you need to create a happy workplace, you need to make such changes.
These breaks could include:
– Having a chat with a colleague
– Going out for a small walk
– Going out to the canteen for a bite.
Allowing frequent breaks may not be a good idea to follow. However, these breaks provide greater breathing space to the employees and this will refresh them and help them to work smarter and harder. Productivity may increase due to such a change.
6. Don’t micro-manage your employees
Micro-managing your employees will have a negative effect on their performance. No one likes to have someone keeping constant tabs on the progress of the work. Employees should be allowed to work at their own pace without constant prompting from the higher-ups. By doing so you indicate that you have no confidence in the ability of the employee to complete the task.
This will greatly demoralize the employee and ultimately productivity will suffer. When you show that you have full confidence in the ability of the employee to complete the task, you will get better results.
7. Have a balanced work-home life
A balanced work-home life situation is primary for employee happiness. This is a very important factor in maintaining a healthy work environment. Work-home life balance is the time one spends in the workplace and outside of work, at home with family. This balance is crucial if you are to build a healthy environment and keep your employees happy.
Employees may experience continuous stress at the workplace and this may lead to health issues that affect the digestive system, induce psychosomatic pains, or even heart problems. This may affect the mental health of the employee in the form of depression, insomnia, or anxiety. The final verdict is burnout and when this happens employees may exhibit symptoms of fatigue, irritability, and mood swings. Burnouts do not affect the employee alone; it affects the entire team and consequently the working of the company. This may prove costly for the employee and employer by way of healthcare spending. So one area that you have to give top priority is the work-home life balance.
The imbalance in work-home life balance is contributed by:
- Longer working days
- Additional overtime hours.
You can off-set this can by instilling a comfortable work-home life balance within your company. You can try these options to better the situation:
– Create working hours that are highly flexible
– Measure the progress of projects not by the hours spent by employees but by actual completion of the project schedules
– Conduct a regular review to understand the workload of employees and how they are managing it
– Plan time-off policies to allow employees to de-stress
These activities will enable the employer to release the pressure of the job and contribute positively towards production.
8. Pay salaries to employees promptly and accurately
This is a vital factor that contributes to the happiness of employees. The most important driving force for an employee is the salary that he or she takes home and they expect this to paid to them as per schedule and without any mistakes.
Mistakes can happen not only in calculating the take home salary but also in calculating the contribution towards funds like EPF & ESI and deductions towards IT and Professional Tax. Any inaccuracies here will have its effect on both the employees and the employer. This would create ill-will and also put the company at loggerheads with the government bodies. This is a sure way to create unhappiness and unpleasantness in the relationship between the employee and employer.
You can overcome this problem in two ways. One, you can get access to a highly efficient software that can handle Payroll and Statutory Compliance in-house or two, outsource the entire payroll processing operations to an external agency. Outsourcing the payroll to an external agency is by far the most ideal solution as it not only enables the company to disburse salaries promptly and accurately but will also handle all statutory compliance issues most efficiently and keep the company compliant, always.
By outsourcing you can:
- Save time and money
- Free your HR team from the mundane task of payroll processing and allow them to focus more on core business activities
- Generate payslips and other statutory reports with a great degree of accuracy
- Keep the company compliant of all the statutory requirements, always.
Conclusion
Companies can create happiness in the workplace by following these tips. The positivity that it creates will contribute greatly to the growth of the company. When the employees are happy they become more motivated and loyal and this, in turn, enhances their creativity and skills. The happiness of the employees is definitely the key to the growth of the company.
These 8 tips or ways to keep your employees happy and productive are all very important in varying degrees. However, you can implement the 8th tip only when you associate with an efficient and highly experienced outsourcer. GetifyHR is one of the leading outsourcers of payroll processing in this region. Their cloud-based, technology driven high-end modules offer a single point solution for all your Payroll, Statutory requirements and Employee related activities. All their modules are seamlessly integrated and are capable of handling these operations in a simplified manner.
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