There is constant pressure to innovate and position products and services more creatively than ever before. Innovation and creativity are more likely to happen when employees are happy. Employees will not be happy if they have heightened states of on-going daily anxiety where they expect something awful to happen at any moment. Worse is when employees sense debilitating stressful incidents. And if they exist in a fearful state, concerned about a public telling off or fear about losing their jobs, employees will turn into inert-inepts.
In order to inspire happiness at work, leaders should focus on creating safe, positive, and nurturing environments rather than a threatening, bullying, fear-engendering hell. If we can create appropriate safe-places where individuals trust each other and bond with other team members, and bridge gaps between teams, then we are more likely to build sustainable success.
When our employees sense they are understood, and welcomed, they naturally feel happy at work. To feel happy at work, or at home, individuals have to feel like they belong. Happy workplaces contagiously inspire people to greater levels of initiative, to be innovative, to achieve higher productivity and to perform more effectively. Workplace happiness is real and is attainable but does not happen by accident. Leaders need to set themselves a goal with specific objectives to ensure a happy workplace.
Encouraging employees to feel a part of the enterprise rather than treating them as carbon units-of-production, enriching work lives through effective job design and enlightening individuals through communicating purpose, vision, values and mission will aid in this creation of appropriate safe-places. Energising people through recognition of a job well done, appreciating them for their positive efforts and praising them publicly will enable a happier work-space.
Delegation through agreeing specific objectives and indicators to be achieved on the journey to achieving these objectives will empower people. They will feel much more in control of their activities and sense the organisation’s processes need them, rather than feeling they are just a part of the processes.
If initiative-taking, innovative and industrious implementers are part of your vision for your employees, help them by creating a happy workplace. Then you will have individuals working with you who share a sense of imagining a positive future for the enterprise as well as for themselves, built on sustainable success and collegiate collaboration and coordination.
A happy workplace is one anchored in a feeling of community with shared and normalised purpose where individuals are given a secure-space and are made to feel welcome. Opening the door to workplace happiness for employees, where they feel they are understood, respected, comfortable and cared for will ensure they feel at home. They will then give more to the future success of the enterprise.
Happy workplaces value relationships, personal growth, positive reinforcement, and brainstorming, a place where everyone’s ideas matter. Employees initially seek to further their own personal interests when they join an enterprise, to secure: income; achievement; status. They then strive for recognition and greater responsibility. If they are happy, they will then want to contribute much more as they realise their employer’s values do not contravene their own.
Happy employees will then wish to use their knowledge, experience and skills they bring with them. They will also gladly and willingly want to develop more capabilities for the benefit of themselves as well as the company.
Employees are looking for an equitable effort-reward bargain which is not only acceptable but delights and excites. Are you ready to start your movement to build an organisation focusing on workplace happiness, where parity of esteem and unity in diversity underpin development of people and a happy workplace?