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Monday, July 21, 2025

Value of happiness

by

20140402

Why is em­ploy­ee hap­pi­ness im­por­tant?

Cristhi­an Ro­jas

Hap­py em­ploy­ees are cen­tral to the suc­cess of a busi­ness. We all in­stinc­tive­ly know this, but it can be hard to pin­point why. No­body would ar­gue that em­ploy­ees should be sad and down­trod­den, yet it seems as though some busi­ness­es and their man­agers set out with the in­ten­tion of pre­sid­ing over a group of mis­er­able peo­ple, and then suc­ceed in do­ing just that.

First, the sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence: Re­search re­leased this month by the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick in Britain con­firms that on av­er­age, hap­pi­ness makes peo­ple 12 per cent more pro­duc­tive. One of the re­searchers, An­drew Os­wald, said in a press re­lease: "Com­pa­nies like Google have in­vest­ed more in em­ploy­ee sup­port and em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion has risen as a re­sult. For Google, it rose by 37 per cent; they know what they are talk­ing about. Un­der sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly con­trolled con­di­tions, mak­ing work­ers hap­pi­er re­al­ly pays off."

How can you make your em­ploy­ees hap­pi­er? The re­searchers of­fered their test sub­jects choco­lates and fruit and the chance to watch com­e­dy clips be­fore they set them to work. A busi­ness can't re­ly on snacks, un­for­tu­nate­ly; even­tu­al­ly the ef­fect would wear off. The most com­mon re­wards that busi­ness­es of­fer, bonus­es and rais­es, al­so have a lim­it­ed ef­fect. Af­ter all, there are lots of peo­ple who are very well paid, yet mis­er­able in their jobs.

Whether you're launch­ing a start­up or man­ag­ing an es­tab­lished en­ter­prise, you have to go out of your way to make peo­ple hap­py; it doesn't just hap­pen. Cre­ate this job for your­self, just like the Hi­malayan king­dom of Bhutan cre­at­ed the Gross Na­tion­al Hap­pi­ness Com­mis­sion, over­seen by a sec­re­tary whose task is to look af­ter the pop­u­la­tion's hap­pi­ness.


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