International week of happiness at work: 3 must-reads from Strategic Happiness Experts

This week is the international week of happiness at work 2020. Happiness at work has taken a different turn this year. Employees must keep reinventing themselves to keep them motivated, relevant, and happy in their jobs. And (HR) managers have the task of helping them with this as much as possible, even if we work remotely!

In view of these challenges, the Strategic Happiness Experts of 2DAYSMOOD have selected three must-reads for you, that will help you increase employee happiness in teams in the smartest way. We summarize 3 articles: How do you create synergy between technology and people in your organization? How do you convert employees’ emotions into needs and improvement actions? And how do you approach this data-driven with a handy step-by-step plan?

Happiness at work in a future full of technology? Stay agile!

Technological developments in our society are moving faster than ever, but at the same time we as humans are in a bizarre and turbulent period. As an organization it is now essential to be and remain agile. As a professional, you can only perform optimally if you are able to connect with your colleagues and put new tools and data to use, to make smart decisions on a daily basis.

As an HR department you bear a large part of this responsibility, how do you support your people and culture? In this new research from Oracle, a 7-factor model is explained, describing how organizations can make technology work for them. By organizing the (human) aspects properly and flexibly, you can even achieve 64% higher business efficiency and 42% higher performance! In other words, if you put the right people, with the right capabilities, in the right place, and evaluate this regularly, your company can grow much faster. This requires continuous investment in, among other things, a learning culture, open communication and data-driven decision-making, also when it comes to softer topics such as happiness at work! If you can lead the conversation with data, you are already one step further.

Recognizing emotions for a positive and productive culture

Everyone has emotions – and they cannot always be controlled. So even during work, at home or at the office, they are present sometimes! So why is it so important as an employer to recognize the emotions of your employees? According to the business magazine Strategy + Business, feelings and emotions largely determine the motivation and ability of employees to contribute to the goals of the organization. By recognizing the feelings of your employees or colleagues, converting them into needs, and meeting those needs, you ensure that people’s positive energy increases. This is not only a catalyst for an overall positive culture, but also benefits your business goals through increased engagement, productivity and creativity. Just think how positive energy in a sales team or the customer service department affects your company image and results!

If you start to meet the needs of employees, you will see that this leads to more happiness at work and business success. Yet it does not change from one day to the next, and you will have to constantly measure what the mood of employees is, what exactly they need, and what action you can take to meet this.

Start increasing happiness at work in 3 data-driven steps

It is obvious: if you want more happy employees, you will have to do something yourself. But 2DAYSMOOD can help you with that. Based on our expertise and best practices with customers, we have written a short whitepaper, which you can download immediately. Here we tell you in three steps what you need to do to achieve that happiness at work!

1. Find your promoters and detractors
How many employees would recommend you as a good employer (promoters)? And how many would not (detractors)? You can quickly find that out by using the employee Net Promotor Score (eNPS). If you know where the highest dissatisfaction is in your organization, you can try to solve this at the source.

2. Find the causes of (dis)satisfaction and engagement
With the 15 measurable drivers of the Employee Happiness Model you get feedback about what your employees find important in their work. This way you know exactly which buttons to push to increase happiness at work.

3. Monitor employees’ mood
If you start a pilot to map and improve happiness at work in your culture, you need a timeline. It is smart to measure the mood of employees throughout the process. This gives you a complete overview of how your employees feel, before, during and after changes!

International week of happiness at work: time to take action!

Hopefully, with this new knowledge and tools you can get started with happiness at work today. Our last tip? Start small, with yourself or in your team. Make sure that the right people pay attention and are aware of the importance of employee happiness, job satisfaction or engagement. Now that working from home makes the relationship with colleagues more difficult, it is important to put extra energy into it. Good luck!