How Can You Measure How Happy Your Team Is?
For many years, employers have hoped that surveys (completed either in paper format or electronically), are accurate mechanisms for revealing how their employees really feel about their work environment and those they share that environment with. However, many employees may be so stressed in their current roles that they don’t know how to be happy at work, and therefore can’t give accurate answers to these surveys.
A better way to find out how your team really feels could be to invite them to meet privately with a manager or member of your HR team who they get on well with and discuss openly how happy they are. These open and less formal discussions will give you a more accurate indication of how strong staff morale is.
What Adjustments Can You Make To Create Happier Teams?
The easiest way to make your team happy at work is to find out which aspects of their jobs are making them unhappy and remedy those things as quickly as possible. People can become unhappy at work for a number of reasons. Perhaps they don’t get on well with their colleagues, maybe they are stressed by a workload that they are struggling to manage, maybe they just miss being away from their kids for so long while they are in the office.
It can be extremely difficult for recent mothers and fathers to suddenly start to spend 10, 12 or maybe more hours a day in the office, away from their children as they return to full-time work after taking parental leave.
This is just one example of the worries that, when compounded by workplace stressors such as deadlines or poorly communicated change, can cause employees to develop mental ill health. Very often, they will subsequently require time-off work to aid their convalescence.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size fits all solution to relieving this stress and making employees happier at work. It is important that businesses listen to individual concerns and come to a compromise with them, which allows them to work more happily and comfortably, while still achieving great results for your business. Solutions could range from remote working, to team meals, to gym memberships. You should keep all options on the table when working with your employees to help them achieve their potential. Happier employees will deliver more ROI for your business.
Why Bother Adjusting?
Some employers may ask why they should go to the effort of adjusting their companies’ working environments for individual staff members. After all, they rose to such an eminent position in their business by getting to their desks for 7am and leaving at 8pm every day for 10 years. Sometimes they would stay later if required. It is important for these employers to appreciate that while this style of working may have facilitated their own success, it is not necessarily the best style of working for all of their employees. Everyone has a different style of working. More importantly, some employees experience mental ill health, which damages not just their performance professionally, but their lives as a whole if they are forced to work in a way that does not suit them.
Listening to your employees is crucial to making the adjustments to their working hours that will allow them to be happy at work. So long as results are achieved, it doesn’t matter how they were achieved. Sometimes employers struggle to find the right questions to ask their staff, when asking them how they feel. Our Mental Health Training for Managers and Online Mental Health Training For Managers courses will train line managers so that they know exactly what to ask their colleagues to give you the feedback that you can build on.
Call us today on 0121 271 0550 to start the conversation.