Happy Employees Foster Successful Businesses

Think back to the best job you have ever had (or, if you’re currently in that position, think about your current position). What is it about the job that made it so enjoyable? What did your position offer that made it so great? Chances are, if you ask anybody about the best job they have ever had, they will be able to quickly list off a few reasons that this job stood out above others. While there are many factors that affect how happy employees are at a given job, certain factors are almost universal. Here at DataStar, we specialize in providing employee engagement surveys and, as a result of our years of managing such surveys, we feel that we are uniquely qualified to provide some perspective to employers of all types on the behaviors that indicate happy employees. In today’s post, we are going to continue where we left off last time and continue to cover some of top behavioral signs that happy employees show.

Work Should be Enjoyable and Professional

Before we begin, we felt that it was important to make one point clear. While we keep harping on the importance of happiness in the workplace, we don’t want to confuse our readers into thinking that they must make their office an “all-fun” zone. It’s important to make sure your employees are happy, however, this can usually be achieved in a professional way that benefits them and the company. While the occasional company picnic or casual Friday is a great way to improve morale, making sure that your business is run professionally with an emphasis on rewarding performance and mobility within the company is a better long-term strategy for ensuring that employees are happy. People enjoy working for companies that a) they feel recognize their work and b) places a focus on employee retention and promotion within the company. Employees, like all of us, want to feel valued. To gauge whether or not your employees feel valued, consider if they display the following behaviors.

• Establishing Relationships: One of the best overall indicators of employee satisfaction is the cohesiveness of the workforce. When you see your employees going about their daily tasks, do they keep their heads down and avoid interaction with other workers? Or, do they take the time to interact with each other and establish lines of communication? The amount of friendly relationships in the workplace is a good indication of whether or not your employees are happy in their positions. When people enjoy coming to work and seeing the people that they work with, they are much more likely to interact with other employees and establish friendships. While we aren’t suggesting that every employee in your company needs to be the best of friends, a happy workplace tends to contain a large network of friendly relationships.

• Cleanliness: When people take pride in something, they tend to want to preserve it. People spend millions of dollars a year on cleaning products, maintenance, and repairs to items such as homes, vehicles, boats, and other items that they have come to take pride in; jobs, unsurprisingly, are no different. Employees that take pride in their job and their workplace tend to keep their work are clean. Now, while you might be thinking back to that deskmate that always had clutter on their desk, there is a big difference between unorganized and unclean. If you notice the employees make spills, drop trash, or allow their equipment to become particularly dirty, it could be a result of dissatisfaction with their work environment.

• Conserving Resources: When your employees are happy, they want to see the company succeed. This often manifests when employees make a conscious effort to stay within company budget and wasting as few resources possible. If your employees show no regard for company resources and are especially wasteful, it may be time to enact some changes to increase happiness.

We hope that this short blog series has helped to explain some of the indicators of happy employees. If you are in need of data that is more quantifiable than simply observing the behavior of employees, please contact us today at DataStar to learn more about our employee engagement survey services. We have helped businesses across many verticals accurately gauge the satisfaction of their employees and we are certain that we can develop an employee survey that will be valuable to you.