Company Morale: What Makes Employees Happy

Employee morale describes the overall outlook, attitude, satisfaction, and confidence that employees feel at work. When employees are positive about their work environment and believe that they can meet their most important career and vocational needs, employee morale is positive and high. Compensation can only keep employees for a certain amount of time, but a positive work environment with high company morale, attractive perks and benefits to supplement their salary can make happy employees stay for longer. According to The Undercover Recruiter, successful businesses have three things in common: an excellent leader, satisfied customers, and happy employees.

What makes employees happy?

The benefits of having happy employees go above and beyond for businesses. Inc.com shares that happy employees are loyal employees, known as one the keys to success for industry leaders such as Google, Apple and software analytics giant SAS Institute. Although taking the steps towards creating a workplace with high company morale can be somewhat costly, it is worth the investment as these employees will help the company grow and achieve successes. Some of the things companies can do to make employees in the workforce happy include: promoting work life balance to relieve people of burnout and stress; offering a comprehensive employee benefits program; encouraging professional growth and personal success by providing training and development opportunities; and encouraging a positive work culture and environment  by developing a reward and recognition program that motivates employees and helps improve the company’s culture. 

How to make employees feel valued?

When employees feel valued, their sense of self-worth and self-esteem increases, thus increasing the high company morale. According to a survey by the American Psychological Association (APA), feeling valued is a key indicator of job performance. Employees who feel valued are more likely to be engaged in their work and feel satisfied and motivated. Ways to make employees feel valued include providing deserved recognition, giving employees many positive and constructive feedback, soliciting employee’ input and using it as often as possible, communicating well and often, giving direct compensation or benefits such as a direct thanks, being flexible with benefits, providing ways for other employees to give praise and recognition, showing appreciation with small tokens, providing work that provides the right level of challenge, celebrating work anniversaries, and more. For more details on how to make employees feel valued, see here. 

How to motivate employees?

There are several benefits to having highly motivated employees and high company morale but for business owners, all roads eventually lead to the bottom line. According business.com, high levels of employee motivation are fundamentally linked to high levels of employee engagement, which is something that organizations are paying much more attention to. When aiming to keep employees motivated foster collaboration within the team, according to Weekdone.com, 39 percent of employees do not feel that their input is appreciated. Secondly, avoid useless meetings as they can result in a waste of time–the average professional wastes 3.8 hours in unproductive meetings each week. It is also important to not micromanage, pay employees what they are worth, provide a pleasant workspace, encourage happiness, and offer opportunities for self-development. Provide your team with training that will allow them to advance in their careers and to become knowledgeable about the latest technologies and industry news.

For more information on how to motivate employees and boost the team’s morale, see here. 

FAQ

What are attractive perks and benefits a company can offer employees?

There are different perks and benefits a company can offer employees to keep them happy and they will vary depending on the field and work environment. A few common job perks include a pet friendly environment, flexible work hours, plenty vacation time, focus on family, onsite health services, mental health support, continuing education, student loan paydowns, giving back, office happy hours, and more. For more information, see here. 

How does a company benefit from happy employees?

When employees are happy, organizations thrive. One study found that happy employees are up to 20% more productive than unhappy employees and when it comes to salespeople, happiness has an even greater impact, raising sales by 37%. 

How to properly communicate with employees?

Successful companies make employee communication a priority. Proper and transparent communication with employees brings up the morale, contributing to the company’s success. For effective communication with employees, be clear and concise, set the tone at the top, be understanding of employees, use different channels of communication, notify employees first, march actions with words, emphasize face to face communication, train often, communicate regularly, measure effectiveness and facilitate conversation.