How to Keep Employees Happy and Engaged at Work

Employee happiness is a great indicator of your business’ overall profitability, with happy employees being more likely to be productive and stay longer with your company. Recent reports are showing that employees are unhappier than ever, which means organizations need to keep a finger on the pulse and prioritize the happiness and overall wellbeing of the workers that make the business work.

Whether you’re an HR manager, an executive, or part of middle management, this blog is for you. We get into what it means for employees to be happy at work, how to contribute to their happiness, and perhaps most importantly, how to check that your strategies are actually working.

How can you define employee happiness?

Employee happiness is a measure of how satisfied, valued, and fulfilled employees feel at work. Happy employees enjoy what they do, feel supported by their managers, and believe they’re making a difference.

Employee's job satisfaction is very much a part of overall happiness, and it’s not just about paychecks or perks. It’s the result of a healthy balance between work that staff find meaningful, strong relationships, and a comfortable workplace culture.

Why should employee happiness matter to your business?

Employee happiness and business success are linked—happy employees are 12% more productive, take fewer sick days, and are less likely to quit (whether soft quitting or outright leaving the company). They also have lower turnover rates, higher output, and can contribute positively to the company's bottom line long-term.

But it's not all spreadsheets and profits. Happy employees tend to create happy work environments too, and are more likely to be pleasant collaborators, perhaps most importantly, take ownership of their work.

Read More: Why Should Fun at Work Matter to Your Business?

How do you improve the happiness of your employees?

Thanks to multiple findings, we now have an idea of what it takes to keep employees happy and eager to work. One of these reports is an Employee Engagement Report from TINYpulse that found that workplace happiness is tied to recognition, much more than pay. 

If employees are appreciated for their job, they are happy in the workplace. And 24% of employees will actively interview for another position if they don’t receive recognition.

Another important study on employee happiness and overall job satisfaction was done by Cisco. They found that a healthy work-life balance is key; 82% of their 28,000-person study confirm that being able to work from anywhere makes them happier.

These two studies, combined with a few others paint a clear picture;

• Employees want a healthy work life balance
• Communication is important for workplace happiness
• Workers love being recognized for their work

But as any HR manager will tell you, people are complicated. You can’t just send out weekly email newsletters, randomly pick an employee of the month, and call it a day.

That's where these tips come in. Here are 10 ways to truly keep your employees happy at work, and excited to contribute to the company’s goals.

1. Create realistic projects

Some of the leading causes of employee stress, according to GANTTIC are unrealistic project goals (49%), ever-changing deadlines (47%), and scope creep (43%). And it all makes sense; nothing frustrates engaged employees more than goals they are not equipped to meet.

Unrealistic timelines can lead to stress, rushed work, and burnout. The same is true for poorly timed projects, like at the beginning of a new year when employees are slowly getting back into work mode.

It's equally as frustrating to work on a project that seemingly never ends because new tasks and objectives are being added to the scope every other week. If you want to keep employees happy, it's important to make projects easier to accomplish.

This may involve breaking them down into smaller milestones with easy-to-measure progress and manageable deadlines. It may also involve inviting your teams to the planning phase discussion so they can chime in on how long they think tasks will realistically take.

2. Invest in professional development

Employees want to grow and offering opportunities can boost employee happiness by a huge margin. According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development.

Make professional development a part of your company culture by offering regular opportunities like workshops, online courses, or even mentorship programs. You can break up the trainings into bite-sized pieces and use your office digital signage to share the information with your workers.

Your business could also incorporate employee assistance programs, and cover some of these professional development costs.

Read more: Using digital signage for employee training

3. Recognize and celebrate achievements

Recognition is one of the most powerful contributors to employee happiness today—HubSpot found that 69% of employees would work harder if their efforts were better appreciated.

An easy-win for creating a culture of recognition is acknowledging all contributions, large and small. This could be as simple as a personal thank-you note, a team-wide acknowledgment, or formal rewards programs with tangible incentives like gift cards or additional PTO. You could also set up a digital recognition board to make employee appreciation more public - or even use elements of workplace gamification to get people engaged.

All of these can contribute to a positive work environment where happy employees can receive recognition for their hard work.

4. Offer flexible work arrangements

The Great Resistance is the term used to describe employees' refusal to return to a fully on-site work arrangement. Among other things, it shows that flexibility isn’t a perk anymore—it’s an expectation. And according to a recent survey by FlexJobs, it's a key factor in productivity as well! 77% of workers surveyed said flexible work makes them more productive and 78% felt it reduces stress.

Providing remote work options, flexible hours, or even a hybrid work model can improve your employees satisfaction and happiness at work.

Encouraging a better work life balance for your employees through flexible arrangements will require planning. But an easy place to begin could be allowing workers to adjust start and end times or offering work-from-home days.

Use corporate communication tools like Slack and Zoom to keep communication open when everyone works from home.

5. Create clear career paths

When employees don’t see a future within the company, they’re more likely to disengage or look elsewhere. In fact, 67% of employees believe that career growth opportunities are critical to their satisfaction, according to the Society of Human Resource Management.

Employees want to know they'll have a job a few months/years down the line, and that their input will be rewarded within the organization. But it doesn't just have to do with the company's success; many employees want to see upward mobility opportunities within the company as well.

Creating room for growth like this often begins with a company culture of openness. Offer your people the freedom to take risks, pitch out-of-the-box ideas and explore new roles.

6. Be intentional about a culture of transparency

Productive employees want to know what’s happening within the organization, from major decisions to small changes. A lack of transparency, on the other hand, can lead to unhappy employees who rre confused and distrusting of the company's leadership.

Harvard Business Review notes that 70% of employees feel more engaged when management shares important updates.

How do you do keep employees in the loop?

• Hold regular town hall meetings
• Send out transparent newsletters
• Create better corporate communications to keep everyone in the loop
• Look into elements of workplace democracy to build a more positive culture

If you want to learn more about strengthening cultures, read our guide on improving sales team culture.

7. Provide competitive benefits including but not limited to salary

If you're looking to improve employee happiness, you'll need to pay workers a competitive wage; your business can't focus solely on culture and communication.

Salaries are certainly important, but benefits can tip the scales for employee morale, satisfaction, and happiness. And since 79% of employees prefer additional benefits over a pay raise, you should also consider incentives like:

• Health insurance
• Gym memberships
• Resources that prioritize employees mental health
• Generous parental leave
• Paid time off
• Childcare
• Flexible working hours

Benefits that allow employees to better manage their work life balance, especially when it comes to family arrangements, can be one of the most powerful ways to improve employee satisfaction.

8. Build a strong onboarding process

Employees' first impression is an excellent opportunity to set the tone for their experience. They get a feel of what the workplace is like, how other workers interact with each other, and even the kind of communication to expect from business leaders.

Research by the Brandon Hall Group shows that a strong onboarding process can improve employee retention and productivity by over 70%.

So a great way to use this would be taking the onboarding process beyond just paper work. Consider:

• Assigning a buddy or mentor
• Providing some hands on training
• Doing one-on-one introductions with the leadership team

9. Encourage comfortable relationship building

Having great relationships at work can make it so much easier to get things done; employee engagement is seven times higher for workers who have a best friend at work, according to Gallup.

But, work place interaction also comes down to personal decisions and you can't force employees to mingle if they don't want to.

A great example of this is an employee who sued their employer for $450,000 and won because a work party triggered a panic attack.

It's important to encourage team building activities, but not if it takes away from the positive work environment you're trying to create.

10. Ask for and act on regular feedback

Open communication is key to understanding your employees' needs and creating the conditions that keep them happy. But asking is only part of it; your business needs to actually use the feedback received.

Yet, only 30% of employees feel their feedback is acted on according to Officevibe.

For the first part, anonymous surveys, one-on-one check-ins, or feedback tools like Culture Amp can help gather regular insights.

It's also important to act on this feedback to show employees their voices matter.

How to measure employee happiness in your company

Keeping track of your employee happiness levels can help you judge how well your strategies are doing. There's no point in creating a shiny new onboarding process if it doesn't improve employee happiness or even help new employees feel connected.

Here are four ways you can make sure your employee happiness efforts matter.

• Employee surveys: Surveys are the most common ways to check employee happiness levels. Ask simple questions like "how satisfied are you in your current role?" and "do you feed valued and recognized for your work?"
• Pulse surveys: These are quick and frequent checkins (usually weekly or monthly) to get a feel of employee sentiment. Here, simple questions like "on a scale of 1-10, how happy are you at work this week?" will do. They provide real time feedback and can help you identify moral changes quickly.
• Employe Net Promoter Score (eNPS): These measure your employees' likeliness to recommend your company. It's calculated by asking one simple question: "how likely are you to recommend this company to a friend?" Workers rate their response from 1-10 and higher scores can equal a happier workforce.
• Use happiness analytics tools: Tools like TinyPulse and Qualtircs help you measure employee sentiment over time by gathering data from many surveys and feedbacks.

Digital signage can help facilitate employee happiness

Managing employee happiness is a strategy that requires close attention and management. The world of work is constantly changing, and keeping your workplace happy and productive is critical to business success - especially as more businesses take their own company culture more seriously.

As well as global employment trends, there are also seasonal elements at play, like the fact that resignations are higher in January as people start off the year with greater ambition.

The good news is that all of these can present excellent opportunities to influence employee happiness for the better. From realistic project timelines to appreciating good work, every small step adds up. But the tools you use to support these efforts can make a huge difference, too.

That’s where ScreenCloud's corporate digital signage solution comes in. Imagine how much easier it would be to share real-time updates, celebrate achievements, or provide training content on screens across your company locations, meeting employees where they are.

Our solution makes it easier than ever to communicate important messages, recognize hard work, and keep your team informed.

Sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo today.