Six tips for happy and healthy employees
Some people see happiness as a state of mind while others believe it can be attained through material things. Whatever your view, happiness is desirable not only for yourself, but also for your employees. Research carried out by Manchester Business School showed that if employees are more satisfied than customers, profits tend to rise, whereas the reverse occurs when customers are happier than staff. Your staff’s happiness can influence your bottom line, so Mark Alexander asked some experts on professional happiness to come up with their top tips for contentment at work.
1. Nic Marks, founder of the Centre for Well-being at the New Economics Foundation, says happiness is about learning: "The key element to happiness at work is for organisations to provide interesting, but not too stressful, work in an enabling climate. People thrive if they have a learning edge to their work, whether it is training or other opportunities to learn new skills or rediscover old ones."
2. Stephen Alambritis of the Federation of Small Businesses says it’s about flexibility: "The top retention-related benefit is flexible working, where employers agree to change employees’ hours of work to fit in with their caring or lifestyle arrangements."
3. Alexander Kjerulf, author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5, asks us to take happiness more seriously: "My challenge to British companies, managers and employees [is to] put happiness at work first. Realise once and for all that life’s too short to spend so many hours in jobs that are at best tolerable and at worst hell on earth."
4. For Annie Lawler at Breathing Space for Business, happiness is about adopting a positive attitude: "Choosing to steer the mind in a positive direction helps in all kinds of situations. If you have somebody with a positive attitude and enthusiasm for their work, you are far more likely to find that person will do a good job, will be motivated and will learn quickly."
5. Angela Baron of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says listening is the key to happiness: "The most important determinant of motivation is the behaviour of first-line managers. People are generally happier and express higher levels of job satisfaction and engagement when they feel they are listened to, involved in decision making and valued by their managers. Good managers communicate, empathise and show a genuine interest in the people they manage. People don’t leave organisations – they leave their managers."
6. Efficient stress-busting measures that increase productivity by reducing sickness and absence leave are the way forward, according to Peter Byrne, Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist at Newham University Hospital: "The best stress buster is physical exercise, which you can encourage through cycle or walk-to-work policies and making sure staff leave their desks at lunchtime. You can also introduce employee schemes where memberships to gyms, swimming pools and health clubs are subsidised."