An integrated approach to achieve employee satisfaction & happiness

An integrated model to achieve employee satisfaction & happiness

Making employees happy is like cooking excellent food.  Have you ever thought what goes into making good food and what makes certain food taste excellent and distinct than others?

An expert chef knows how to put together the right ingredients in right proportion/combination along with passion to achieve the right taste and customer delight.

Similarly, an expert HR should be able to put together all the factors in the right proportion and combination to achieve employee happiness.

Let’s look at what all factors contribute to employee happiness

Main Ingredients – These are your Compensation and Benefits, Policies & processes, Job Security Etc., Quality of your main ingredients will determine the quality of your result. Pay higher than the industry standards, have the best of compensation & benefits plan, adopt best practices while making the policies and processes, Offer highest level of job security.  These are certain basic factors that account towards employee happiness.

Add to taste -  While the above can make employees happy to a certain extent, it will still leave gaps in level of happiness. Hence add some salt and pepper to taste. These are your performance management system, Training & Development, Career planning systems, Rewards & recognitions, HR Automation systems, Recruitment management etc.,

Spice It up: Once you have the above in place, its now time to spice it up. At this level you can customize to cater to different needs of employees as every employee may have a different preference.  These are Fun at work, creativity corner, rest areas, entertainment corner, employee engagement activities, discounted health club memberships (Gym, Yoga). This will accelerate and take your employee happiness levels to a very next level. This is your tipping point.

Presentation layer:  Sometimes you may cook the best of food however it may not sell if you don’t present it well. This is your office environment, light it well, clean & organized, make it colorful and full of life, create positivity in the air by having digital displays reflecting positive quotes, hire employees who are happy by nature and can spread happiness etc.,

Flames: Certain factors may not be visible in the end product; however, you cannot cook food i.e., run an organization if they are not present. These factors have a large impact on employee happiness. These are Honesty, Trust, Respect, Transparency etc.,

Ask yourself this question - would you be happy working in an organization that may pay really well and take care of above mentioned but is does not practice honesty, is not transparent and has hidden agendas, has a culture where leaders and employees don’t respect each other, where management does not trust employees & organization is not trusted by the market.