7 beneficial strategies to improve employee happiness, motivation, and more

How to improve employee happiness in the workplace: seven strategies

To increase employee happiness you must first understand what your employees value.

In a recent survey of 500 UK employees, 79% said they were happy in their roles.⁴ Their top reasons for being happy included:

• Good colleagues
• Feeling appreciated
• Flexibility
• Career development opportunities
• Alignment with company’s mission

So you can create a work environment that makes your employees happy, we've developed seven strategies that can act as a guide for your wellbeing goals.

Strategy one: prioritise a work-life balance

While it’s important your employees meet their deadlines, you must ensure the demands of a project don’t encroach on their personal lives. This is especially true in times of growth, when you’re relying on experienced employees to also train new joiners. That said, if you’re concerned some of your employees are at risk of burnout, we suggest using an employee survey to gauge how people are feeling. For example, are they working outside of their normal hours or taking work home at the weekend? If they are, you’ll need to take action.

Strategy two: recognise and reward your employees

When employees feel appreciated, they’ll be happy, as they know other people respect and value their efforts. However, it’s important to be sincere in your approach, otherwise, you run the risk of disappointment. So for that reason, we always recommend thanking someone verbally. That said, we do understand this is difficult if you have several direct reports. Fortunately, with our Celebration hub you can look up different team members by name and add a personalised message to each recognition you send –⁠ which is a great way to show your appreciation before thanking them in person.

Strategy three: be transparent and have open communication

Open communication encourages collaboration and builds trust. Employees who feel they’re in a safe environment are often happier as they know their employer values what they have to say. On the other hand, when companies are reluctant to share information they tend to have more frustrated and unhappy employees. Furthermore, key updates could be missed if there is an overreliance on regional managers to cascade information. With our platform, internal comms managers and HR teams can use enhanced admin features to communicate key updates. This means everyone receives the same comms, no matter where they are in the world.

Strategy four: offer career development opportunities

The link between developing a person’s career and their happiness is progression – as it satisfies their hunger to grow and learn. Very rarely do people enjoy doing the same job every day for the rest of their working lives. They want variety and if they can progress at the same time – even better. Not to mention, career development opportunities also benefit your organisation. You’ll get access to an ever-expanding pool of high-calibre internal talent, and spend less time and money on the recruitment process. Finally, the renewed sense of purpose an employee gains after a successful promotion results in better productivity and engagement.

Strategy five: offer a holistic benefits package

Employee benefits, especially those that support a person’s financial, mental, and physical wellbeing, naturally have a profound effect on happiness. So it’s not surprising that employees who have access to an extensive perks and discounts package are usually very loyal. Consider the Lanes Group, for example, they noticed a 98.3% increase in employee happiness and a 1.8% decrease in sick days after launching our employee experience platform. Because our perks and benefits include discounted gym memberships, in addition to thousands of deals with popular retailers, employees really get value from what we offer.

Strategy six: build a positive company culture

A healthy company culture is incredibly important, particularly as we spend so much of our time working. In an ideal world your employees should look forward to the start of the working week. While this may seem like a lofty aspiration, creating a supportive and inclusive work environment has many positive outcomes with regards to employee health, experience and engagement. When your employees feel connected they’re not only happier, but also work better as a team, which in turn promotes business success.

Strategy seven: create a flexible working policy

Simply put, people are happier when their work schedules accommodate their personal commitments. Furthermore, offering flexible working options also attracts top talent to your business. Reasons for employees wanting to work flexibly include: starting later in the day to drop the kids off at school, or working remotely because of a lengthy commute. If you don’t have a flexible working policy, we recommend starting small by introducing a designated remote working day once a week.

How can you measure employee motivation and happiness?

If you want to find out how motivated and happy your employees are, you should first turn your attention to key performance indicators (KPIs). Usually, happy and motivated employees have no trouble achieving or exceeding their target goals, so this data gives you a good insight into how motivation varies across your organisation.

Other tools that are good at measuring happiness and motivation include:

• Employee motivation assessments: These surveys ask questions based on a person’s commitment to goals, interest in promotion and job satisfaction
• Focus groups: Teams share what makes their jobs exciting. They may also discuss what motivates them and any preferred ways of working.
• Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI): Employees answer three questions on a scale from 1– The results are then put into a formula to generate an ESI value. The higher the value, the happier the employee.

Keep your employees happy and healthy with Perkbox

Prioritising employee happiness has many positive business outcomes and contributes to higher levels of productivity and lower absenteeism rates.

To make your teams happy, you need to consider how you can support their mental, physical and financial wellbeing, as these factors strongly influence employee experience.

Our app is a comprehensive employee experience solution with lots of useful features. For example, Perks hub contains over 4,000 perks and discounts worldwide, in addition to Wellbeing hub that has a range of physical and mental health resources.

If you want to learn how Perkbox can increase your employees’ health and happiness, request a demo and a member of our team will get back to you.