Eager to take steps to increase your employees’ happiness? This goal cannot be achieved simply or overnight, with a team happy hour or by congratulating everyone on doing a ‘good job.’ First, you’ve got to know how to measure employee happiness.
Once you can measure employee happiness, you will know where you stand. From there, you have the best chance of understanding your success with the measures you take to improve employee satisfaction.
Why We Measure
In other areas of work, the idea of measuring is clear: we measure how successful a type of medication is. We measure how successful a new email campaign is. We measure how successful a new retail placement in a store is. Why do these same companies overlook the importance of measuring employee happiness?
We believe it’s not out of a lack of caring but a lack of knowledge and because it’s not that easy to measure employee happiness. Even the most well-meaning companies who conduct surveys, speak to employees, and genuinely focus on employee satisfaction may not correctly understand how to measure employee happiness. Here are our top 4 steps in how to measure employee happiness.
1: Understand What You Want to Measure
Whether it’s gauging your company’s risk of quiet quitting, deciding where to allocate employee-retention resources, or simply understanding what a “happy employee” is, figuring out what actually to measure can be a daunting part of deciding how to measure employee happiness.
Many peoples’ first instinct is to define terms like “happiness” and “satisfaction,” - but this can do more harm than good. In attempting to find a single definition of employee happiness that works for everyone, we disregard the critical fact that happiness means something different to each person.
2: Ask the Right Questions
The first factor in measuring employee happiness is asking the right questions. If simply asking, “Are you happy?” was that easy, Amazing Workplace wouldn’t be such a sought-out resource. The questions you ask are essential in measuring your employees’ current level of happiness, and we’ll help you determine which questions are best for your company.
3: Collect the Right Data
Should employees rate their happiness on a scale of 1 - 10? Should they rank factors like pay, benefits, coworkers, and purpose? Should they tell you the percent likelihood that they’ll quit in the next six months? Another critical element in measuring employee happiness is determining how to pose questions and answer options.
4: Analyze the Data
Maybe you’ve done some surveys and collected some data. Now what? How do you analyze the data to truly gauge whether employees are happy, who’s happy, why they’re happy, and what actions you want to take? An often-overlooked step in measuring employee happiness is how to interpret the data.
Take the Next Step With Amazing Workplace
After you’ve completed these steps successfully, you’ll have a picture of your employees’ happiness. But you may have follow-up questions, like:
- What should I do next?
- What areas do I want to improve?
- How am I going to measure change over time?
Research shows that companies that do not survey their employees have 40% more turnover than companies that do. Workplaces that prioritize employee happiness by conducting surveys, listening, and taking action based on results witness happiness levels double compared to employees at workplaces that do not take those same steps.
Interested in how we can help you measure employee happiness? Set up a demo to learn more.