Every Business Metric Can Be Improved Upon With Increases In Employee-Life Satisfaction.

Employee mental health is a hot topic, with many companies intending, or attempting, to address the subject. Some companies are offering counselling, others are bringing in coaches to open up debate. This may seem daunting to explore, especially when your focus is on sales and bottom-line profits. What if there was a win-win solution that not only addressed employee mental health, but actively fosters the growth of employee well-being whilst improving bottom-line profits? What if this was a simple task that could be done instantly and have an instant, quantifiable impact?

Happy Employees Grow Themselves And Your Business.

Happier employees are more productive, motivated, creative, and give better customer service. They take less time off, make better co-workers, are calmer, make better decisions and stay with the company longer. Sales and profits will increase, recruitment and training costs reduce and everyone, from the boardroom to the shop-floor, will find work more enjoyable.

Instead of wondering how to attract more customers, better employees and larger profits, consider the impact on these metrics if you increase the happiness of your employees. This doesn’t involve “smiling policies”, wage increases or providing entertainment. I recently spoke with an unhappy employee of a large organisation. When I asked what the company could do to improve their life-satisfaction, they listed six things; none of which have any need for company resources. The first thing listed was if their supervisor could complete schedules further in advance. They never even mentioned the salary.

It’s Not Your Job To Find Solutions.

The last person who should decide what would help employees’ mental health is the boss. Whilst the change in culture comes from the top down, the driving force behind effective change is bottom up. Neither is the boss the best person to find out what employees want. Employees are unlikely to give straight, honest, feedback criticizing the company and would likely be happier if they had your salary, house, and car.

The key to success is having the right people, asking the right questions, within a framework which allows for solutions to be formed as low down the organizational structure as possible. Can the unit manager and their team solve this or does it need escalating? Would all company employees benefit from this solution? Employees working shifts find it hard to plan regular activities outside of work. They may want to participate in further studies, sports, hobbies, community action, start a side business or plan a weekly family night. Whilst weekends and holidays may be key shifts, there is no harm in allowing employees to nominate a fixed time off each week. These fitter, more fulfilled and relaxed employees will perform better in the workplace. If you can extract their message and do all you can to facilitate the change needed, the workforce will be happier.

Tadysh Business Model

I developed a model which can be implemented in any organization, of any size or complexity. My video training course covers everything you need to know about how to change the culture, engage the employees, extract the important information that could change peoples’ lives and measure the success of growing happiness.

Measuring Happiness

Whilst happiness as a concept is multi-faceted, complex and individual, there are many common themes. Good diet, sleep, exercise, healthy relationships, meeting financial needs, clean air and natural surroundings are all good for mental health. These form the basis of the Tadysh Happyometer – www.tadysh.com This is a free website tool which, via 20 questions, measures general happiness and provides tips to increase the frequency of happy habits. Users complete the quiz monthly and can compare their scores over time. The scores are split into spheres of Social, Mental, Physical and Professional Happiness.

Measuring The Happiness Of Groups

With Tadysh Group Keys, managers can see an anonymous collation of the results for anyone assigning their profile to a specific key. No one knows who gave what answers, but the collective score gives a monthly indication of the group’s mental health, and if this is increasing or decreasing. With organizational parent and child keys, an international restaurant chain would have a metric for each restaurant, area, region, and country. Employees complete the quiz to help the company know if their cultural changes to employee growth are being effective. The benefit to the employees is they are self-coaching their happiness and benefiting from monthly mental health audits. It isn’t just what the company can do, but what the individuals can do themselves.

Measuring Personal Happiness

This system works from the bottom of the structure upwards, but what about those at the top? Happiness is individual and the success of your business is affected by your own well-being. You care for the employees and need to ensure you take equal care of yourself. What affects your happiness month by month?

What can you do to make next month happier? What is holding you back from increasing your own happiness?

Using your own criteria, and combining this with executive coaching, I create an individually bespoke quiz, which you complete monthly or weekly. Each month, with online face-toface coaching, we examine one theme to grow that area. This programme focuses on what makes you tick and how you can systematically grow your happiness. Clients understand the need to make time to do the things that bring them joy and focus on addressing issues which reduce their happiness, with regular monitoring.

Fostering the growth of employee well-being is not something to see as a chore or a cost. It is the simplest, cheapest and most rewarding thing you can do to make a positive impact on the bottom line. Instead of tackling business metrics, grow the happiness of your business and the metrics will grow naturally.

About Adrian Grainger.

I train organizations how to measure and grow the happiness of groups and coach individuals to grow their own happiness. For more information, visit www.tadysh.co.uk or email adrian@tadysh.co.uk