Employee happiness is a more effective metric than engagement, says Friday Pulse CEO Nic Marks
"What if the key to creating a positive workplace is to stop talking about employee engagement and start talking about happiness? It requires a major shift in business thinking, but it’s worth it."
Nic Marks, founder and CEO of Friday Pulse
Do you want to know the truth about employee engagement? It’s a stagnant idea.
Millions are spent annually on engagement surveys, programmes and apps, with little return on investment. Even the great advocate of engagement, Gallup, hasn't identified improvements in the last 20 years, with just 10-15% of employees worldwide being “fully engaged”.
Professor Alex Edmans from the London Business School has noted that businesses with positive cultures outperform their competitors, with 3% higher annual returns on the stock market.
What if the key to creating a positive workplace is to stop talking about employee engagement and start talking about happiness? It requires a major shift in business thinking, but it’s worth it.
1. Happiness is easier to measure
There is a fundamental flaw to asking about engagement. No one can answer the question, “How engaged are you at work?”
It’s not clear what is being asked. In my experience people don’t know what the top of scale – fully engaged – means. They worry they would need to be available 24/7 and always focused on work.
Due to a lack of clarity, the question doesn’t deliver a robust reliable statistical measure. Much easier to answer is the question, “How happy were you at work this week?” We all know whether we were happy or not. The data gathered highlights whether teams are thriving or struggling and enables leaders to tackle problems as they emerge.
2. Asking about employees’ happiness shows interest
Asking employees about their weekly happiness shows the business is interested in people’s experience. In contrast, engagement sounds extractive, with the organisation trying to get as much as they can from their employees. Somewhat ironically, happiness is more engaging as a proposition than engagement!
3. Happiness boosts employee engagement
Happiness brings all of the promised benefits of employee engagement, and more. Data I have gathered over the last few years shows that happy teams:
- Have higher retention rates;
- Experience fewer conflicts, and
- Are more collaborative, creative and productive – our estimate is at least 28% more productive.
Measuring employee weekly happiness is a bold idea but it creates robust data that provides real-time insights into how teams are really doing. For example, think about how useful it would be to know how happy hybrid teams are compared to those working full-time in the office.
There is a genuine need for a much more dynamic and people-centred way of measuring employee experience than the outdated annual employee survey. Measuring weekly employee happiness is much more dynamic and people-centred than old outdated annual engagement surveys. Why not give it a try?
