How to Increase Employee Happiness at Work

From the perfect storefront to top-notch products and branding, allocating resources to your small business's tangible and visual aspects can seem natural. But less obvious factors, such as employee satisfaction, can be just as important to your success.

These tips can help you create a strategy to boost employee happiness and increase the likelihood of keeping employees on staff long term.

Why Is Employee Satisfaction Important?

Employee satisfaction can pay serious dividends to your bottom line and beyond. Think of the most important relationships in your life. They’re likely the ones that make you happy even on their most trying days. The same concept applies to the relationship between your business and employees. 

Just as you want to be seen, heard, and valued in your personal relationships, employees want the same in their professional relationships. When they receive it, both your business and employees can reap the rewards. 

1. Autonomy can help breed happiness.

What does employee happiness look like at work? Autonomy can play a key role. When employees feel trusted and empowered, they can feel less stifled. Being micromanaged never boosts confidence. 

When managers invest in developing teams that are empowered with everything they need to make great decisions, managers will likely find that they have more time to invest in growth.

2. Happiness boosts productivity.

Happiness and productivity can go hand-in-hand. A 2022 study from the University of Warwick, which surveyed 700 participants, found that happy employees were 12% more productive. A productivity boost could help you decrease overtime and improve your overall customer service experience.

3. Decrease employee turnover.

Satisfied employees are more likely to feel a sense of loyalty and commitment to your company, increasing the chances you retain employees. According to the 2020-2021 State of the Workplace survey from the Society of Human Resources Management, which surveyed 642 U.S. workers and 1,737 U.S. HR professionals, the number one factor influencing how employees graded their HR department was employee retention efforts.

Top Tips for Keeping Your Employees Happy

Lower turnover, higher productivity, and more empowered employees are all strong benefits to consider. But how do you keep staff happy, especially if you’re a small business that can't give everyone a raise?

The tips below can help you discover how to increase employee happiness in a way that fits your budget and business.

Cultivate a Positive Work Culture

A positive work environment doesn't necessarily mean 24/7 smiles and premium snacks, though of course friendliness and snacks can be helpful. Instead, creating a positive work culture is about building an environment where employees feel seen, heard, and valued.

According to Indeed, employees perceive positive company cultures as investing in their well-being, providing resources to help them succeed, and prioritizing collaboration and interaction with coworkers.

Tips for a positive work culture:

• Revisit benefits. Poll employees on the mental health and wellness benefits they’d find most beneficial.
• Offer mental health days. Consider adding mental health days as paid days off to your benefits package, maybe starting with two per year or one per quarter.
• Rethink your questions. When assigning tasks and checking in on progress, ask employees, “What resources do you need to get this done?” or “How can I help?” These are more empathetic questions that can help employees feel supported and safe asking for help.

Consider Flexible Work Schedules

After the pandemic sent workers into their homes, many employees now crave continued flexibility. Whether you’re an on-site employer or one that can easily accommodate employees in remote locations, schedule flexibility can help attract and retain top talent.

Tips for flexible schedules:

• Revisit current shifts. If your business requires employees to be on-site, ask team members if current shift schedules meet their needs. For instance, if your coffee shop employs college students, you may find that a 1-4 pm shift works better than 12-6 pm.
• Build in meeting-free blocks. No matter where your employees work, standing “meeting-free” times can help boost morale. For instance, if you have employees with kids in school, an afternoon meeting-free block can offer stress-free time to pick up their kids without internal scheduling snafus.
• Reimagine "sick" days. Instead of a limited pool of paid sick days, consider switching to “wellness days." That time off can be used for whatever an employee needs instead of just times when they’re not feeling well.

Foster Work-Life Balance

It can be possible to create a work environment that lets your employees define work-life balance themselves. Fostering a work-life balance is all about adopting policies that support what your team finds important beyond their work. 

Tips for work-life balance:

• Create communication policies. Consider setting hours where employees aren’t expected to respond to emails, texts, or Slack messages.
• Encourage community involvement. To get teams out of the office and into the community, you could create time off policies that include a certain number of volunteer hours each month or quarter.
• Poll employees for ideal perks. Ask employees what benefits and perks you could provide to improve their work-life balance. You may discover unique and hyper-local ways to boost morale on a budget.

Invite Employee Feedback 

A successful workplace makes employees feel heard. An employee satisfaction survey can help employers find new ways to support their teams. 

Tips for feedback:

• Make performance reviews a two-way process. Transform your review periods by making them a two-way street. By creating practices that allow managers to review employees and employees to review managers, you’re much more likely to bring challenges and kudos to the surface so they can be celebrated or resolved.
• Invite anonymous questions. If you regularly hold all-hands meetings, create an online form where attendees can submit anonymous questions. Then, wrap up your meeting with a Q&A session to answer questions openly and honestly. If you don’t immediately have an answer, say you’ll find one and then send it to your team as a follow-up.
• Check in with employees at every level. The smaller your business is, the more opportunity you have to spend quality time with employees at every level. Try asking open and inviting questions like, “How would you improve X process?” or “What do you think our customers’ number one complaint is, and how can we help you fix it?”

Recognize and Reward Achievements

Employee satisfaction can skyrocket when you take time to celebrate and reward your team’s wins. Rewards don’t have to be grand gestures or take a bite out of your company’s bottom line. Recognition and rewards programs of any size can let employees know their contributions don’t go unnoticed and that you’re grateful for their efforts. 

There’s nothing like a “thank you” to drive employee happiness. After all, why wouldn’t you want to come to work every day for an employer who celebrates what you bring to the table?

Tips to recognize and reward your team:

• Ask for shout-outs. Whether through an online form or a whiteboard in your breakroom, you can invite employees to celebrate their fellow team members. If you have meetings, share the shout-outs with the rest of the team. You could even consider a year-end award for the employees with the most shout-outs throughout the year.
• Prioritize personalization. Instead of falling back on Starbucks and Amazon gift cards as a one-size-fits-all reward, ask your high achievers what they want. By personalizing the reward, you can boost employee happiness even more.
• Don’t forget the fun. Every member of your team has unique talents, and your rewards program can create ways to celebrate them. You can recognize the person who livens up your Slack channel with the most hilarious GIFs. A “Top Chef” reward can celebrate someone who consistently delivers delicious treats to the breakroom. These efforts can help keep morale up to make your business a great place to work.

The Takeaway

Even though employee satisfaction looks different for every employee, your business can take meaningful steps to make your business a great place to work overall. By supporting your employees at work and beyond, you can improve employee happiness, leading to lower turnover rates and the productivity your business needs to reach new heights.

A version of this article was originally published on April 3, 2012.

Photo: Getty Images