The 5 disasters of happy employees

There is a lot being said and discussed about the happiness of employees. And in our work, we’ve been dealing with companies that addressed employee happiness for a while now. Our experience in doing so has provided us with valuable insights. These include discrepancies we between the theory and practice, as well as some major issues. We feel it is our obligation to make everyone aware of these issues, or potential disasters, that await you when employees become happy at work.

Smiling for no reason
Firstly, we found people smiling while they work. And not just briefly after hearing a joke or getting good news, but seemingly random and overall just a lot more. In some cases, the employee would smile even as they engage with customers – causing them to smile as well. We are still working on effective solution for this problem, but for now we are still in the dark.

Impacted sales and productivity
It has been reported that happy employees are way more successful in closing deals. Studies suggest that in the worst of cases, this problem can escalate to significant quantities. As a result, companies risk production levels to rise and a consistent increase of turnover.

Uncontrolled advertising
There’s another problem. Happy employees seem to continue to promote their employer outside working hours. Without instruction or scripting, they talk positively about their employer and the products they produce to friends and family. We have requested authority to wire and track happy employees outside work to get a further grip on this phenomenon, but so far we have not been granted permission to do so.

Motivation issues
One day we came across a manager walking around the office, completely lost. Her employees were working, helping each other, being pro-active, without the need of their manager looking over their shoulder. We looking at re-purposing the time from management that was previously spent on micromanaging, but it’s not easy.

Refusing to let go
As employees grow more happy and satisfied in the work place, they are more resilient to stressful situations and more willing to take on new and/or bigger challenges. Even when times get rough, they stick to their targets and keep moving forward. As a result, targets have been overshot – and therefore missed.

As you can see, improving happiness at work is not to be taken lightly. It will heavily influence the success for your organization and the working lives of your employees. If you are already dealing with the effects related to happy employees, or fear the disaster may be upon you soon, please get in touch with us. We are dealing with this abnormality on a daily basis now and together we will surely be able to make a difference.