“Happiness at work is an overall feeling of positivity about the work you do, the people you work with, and the company you work for. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll end every working day feeling positive, some days are going to be particularly challenging, but happiness at work means not having a feeling of dread each Sunday night.

Some employees are happiest when faced with a brand-new problem that tests their abilities, others are happier doing work that they’re an expert in and have done many times before.

For some employees, having social connections with their colleagues is key to their happiness at work, others are happier keeping relationships more formal.

Some employees are happy as long as they feel they are being paid fairly for the work they’re doing, so they can focus on enjoying their time outside of work, others need to know they’re progressing and have access to development opportunities.

Why is being happy at work so important?
A full-time employee spends around a third of their waking hours each week at work, and if they spend all of this time unhappy then it’s inevitably going to have a significant impact on their overall wellbeing.

Having happy employees can bring a range of benefits to an employer
Research suggests that happiness at work improves an employee’s productivity and quality of work, which is key to a successful business. Studies have specifically shown that people who are in positive moods are better at lateral thinking and are quicker to process complex information, skills that are crucial to problem-solving.

A happy employee who feels fulfilled in their role is less likely to leave the business, therefore focussing on how to improve happiness at work can lead to a reduction in employee turnover. This can significantly reduce costs related to recruiting and onboarding new employees and means companies can retain critical business technical knowledge.

Happiness tracking
At Propel Tech, we use a range of different methods to track employee happiness, but most are centered around collecting feedback. One of these methods is our annual employee survey, as part of the survey everyone is given a set of statements about different aspects of working at Propel Tech, and asked to what extent they agree or disagree. We also track employee NPS through the survey and ask open questions to obtain qualitative data and suggestions for improvements.

And if the responses weren’t what we wanted to hear…
Every year we analyse the survey results and identify which areas are scoring lowest in agreeability. We then select a couple of these areas to focus on improving over the next 12 months. To do this we often go back to employees to find out more information about how they think we could improve in this area and what they’d like to see change.

We also carry out external research to see what possibilities are out there in terms of how we could do things differently. For example, our 2022 survey showed that employees would like to see improvements with the benefits package that we offered, so we carried out internal and external research to see how we could make improvements and in January 2023 we launched our much-improved benefits package.

Maintaining a happy culture
We promote a continuous feedback culture at Propel Tech and ask employees each month in their one-on-ones if they have any feedback that they’d like to share about working here. This helps us to address any concerns they might have as quickly as possible, so we can maintain a happy culture all year round, rather than relying purely on our annual survey.

We’ve found that our employees really value having flexibility, so we operate flexible start and finish times around our core hours, empowering employees to decide where they work best, home or the office, and we even give them the opportunity to work from abroad for periods of time.

We also arrange regular engagement and social activities, so we can have some fun away from the day-to-day work. These can range from something small like our Propel Tech Fantasy Football League competition to our upcoming end-of-year celebration party.

Tips to boost workforce happiness
You have to put the time in to properly understand your people, as it’s going to vary from business to business.

My number one tip would be to talk to and listen to your employees. Don’t assume that you know what will make them happy at work just because it’s worked in another business. Actively seek feedback and act on it. Implement requested changes where possible, or if there are business reasons that mean you can’t make the change, take the time to explain to employees the reasons for this, so at least they know that they’ve been listened to.

And finally – marketing yourself to the most important audience of all
There’s been a great shift within some HR teams and businesses over the last few years to taking more of a marketing approach to HR and employee engagement. So basically, thinking about employees as consumers and generally being more employee-centric to air happiness and retention.”