Your workers are disengaged and burned out. Here are some simple ways you can help them.
- Research shows that happy workers perform better and are rated more highly as teammates.
- The upshot for managers: Cultivate happy employees.
Note to managers: Happiness drives business results.
A study published last year found that employees with high measures of self-reported happiness upon starting their jobs performed better than those with lower measures of happiness. They got promoted faster, received more recognition awards, did better on performance reviews, and were rated more highly as teammates.
The research was conducted over a five-year period and involved nearly 1 million US Army soldiers at the Department of Defense, the single-largest employer in the world.
That might sound like unhappy companies are doomed, but Paul Lester, associate professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School, who led the study, says happiness is a combination of nature and nurture. And fixes need not come at a high cost.
"You don't need to bring in McKinsey to improve the happiness of your organization," he said. "There are a number of short, beneficial interventions that can be done on a shoestring budget and don't require a ton of prep work."
As the start of the pandemic approaches its third anniversary and American workers continue to quit their jobs at nearly record rates, stress levels have skyrocketed and employee engagement has cratered. According to the most recent Future Forum Pulse, a quarterly survey of more than 10,000 desk workers in the US, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK 42% of the workforce reports experiencing burnout. Meanwhile, Gallup's report on the State of the Global Workforce, published last year, paints a bleak portrait of employees: Stressed, Anxious, and Sad, as Harvard Business Review put it.
But while some managers might view fostering employee happiness as too daunting a task, too costly, or too time-consuming, they play a crucial role in influencing employee satisfaction, and Lester and other experts encourage them to stay optimistic. With the right focus and strategies, happiness can become an easy and inexpensive mainstay in any organization.
Hire the happy
Many organizations already use cognitive and psychometric tests as part of their hiring process. Lester said that including an additional survey to measure a candidate's baseline happiness and optimism could be a relatively straightforward and cost-effective way to boost well-being in the organization.
"All things being equal, it makes sense to hire the happier person," he said. "They're walking in the door with a great attitude."
This isn't to say that hiring managers should prioritize job candidates' happiness above their knowledge or skills, but instead use measures of happiness as a tiebreaker, he said. Importantly, these measures ought to be based on valid assessment tools, such as the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, and not merely a manager's hunch.
Cultivate happiness
When it comes to boosting an employee's emotional well-being, there is only so much a boss can do. "But they do have some influence and opportunities," Lester said.
What's more, these opportunities do not require much money. Lester and his co-researchers have recommended managers lead team exercises geared toward improving employee well-being. In particular, they recommend the Three Good Things exercise in which people write down three things that went well each day and what caused those things to go well, for one week.
These exercises might evoke eye rolls at first, but they can also be powerful catalysts for a shift in mindset, Betsy Kauffman, an organizational-design consultant, said.
"Leaning into strengths and thinking about what's going well, as opposed to dwelling on the bad stuff, supercharges your dopamine," she said. "It's something we don't do enough of at work."
Model optimism
The most fail-safe way for a manager to keep people happy at work is to be a good boss — meaning, be a good human.
"This requires active listening, showing empathy, developing trust, and finding what makes people tick so you can help them grow and develop," Adam Bandelli, the leadership consultant based in New York, said.
"Make them feel they're being invested in and that they're valued," he said.
These exercises and surveys won't raise employees' levels of happiness overnight. But improving individual worker and team well-being is all but proven to be worth the investment — and it starts at the top, Lester says.
"Happiness is contagious, so leaders need to role model it," he said. "Organizations and teams tend to take on the personality of the leader: If your leaders are unhappy, chances are your employees are, too."
—This story was originally published February 18, 2022.