Where Gallup Gets Employee Happiness Wrong

Recently, there’s been some chatter on the web in response to a Gallup post that suggests that prioritizing employee happiness isn’t the right approach for companies that wish to achieve desirable business outcomes.

While we agree to a certain extent — you could make your employees happy by taking their entire workloads off their plates while paying them to do nothing — employee happiness is, in our opinion, a cornerstone of any successful organization.

Let’s take a step back. Here’s what Gallup had to say: 

• Creating a great workplace culture that has star employees who know how to win new customers isn’t about making employees happy or content — and organizations falter when they think it is.

At TINYpulse, we care a great deal about employee happiness. Our belief is that employee happiness largely influences productivity and impacts the customer experience. That said, we also know that companies can’t simply rely on making their employees happy and expect their business to grow into an industry powerhouse anytime soon.

Still, happiness is a critical ingredient in any successful organization. This is why we believe bringing employee sentiment to the forefront through multiple feedback channels is so important.  

The purpose of TINYpulse Engage is to provide business leaders insight into the underlying issues that serve as roadblocks to achieving desired business outcomes. We do this by measuring real-time sentiments in such a way that increases the likelihood employees will be honest (e.g., they’re fast to fill out and they’re administered anonymously). In turn, the results gleaned from our approach allow leadership to take action to improve whatever is discouraging employees the most. Maybe it’s the work environment. Maybe it’s using outdated tools and technologies. Maybe it’s an unevenly distributed workload. When management uses data to improve the work experience, this automatically enhances an employee’s happiness level.

If you’ve ever been miserable at a job, you know how hard it can be to actually get your work done. Instead of arriving at the office prepared and excited to tackle a bunch of projects, you feel miserable as you glance at the clock and see that it’s only 9:14 in the morning.

SOURCE: GIPHY

On the other hand, when you’re happy with your job, you’re committed and have a ton of energy in the morning. Not only are you prepared to work right when you get to the office, but you’re also looking forward to collaborating and spending time with your teammates.

That being the case, it comes as no surprise that research suggests employee happiness is an important component of any successful company. Consider the following statistics:

• Companies with happy employees outperform their competitors by 20%
• Happy employees are 12% more productive than their depressed peers
• Happy salespeople bring 37% more sales to their organizations
• More than one-third of employees (36%) would trade $5,000 of their salary to be happy at work
• Happy employees take 10 times fewer sick days than unhappy employees

The happier your employees are, the stronger and healthier your organization will become.

Because employee happiness is critical to the success of your company, it’s something that should not be taken for granted. Remove the guesswork from the equation. The easiest way to figure out how happy your employees are is by asking them directly. Focus your efforts on boosting employee happiness, one improvement at a time, and the rest will fall into place.

RELATED POSTS:

• How This Company Boosted Employee Happiness by 20%
• 10 Small Ways to Make a Big Impact on Employee Happiness