A happy employee workforce does not a productive workforce make. Strange as it may sound, when speaking about employee happiness the term simply relates to their personal state of mind. When speaking of a productive workforce, the important item is for your employees to be engaged, which can be broken down into two aspects;
Connection and Collaboration
Connection throughout a workforce breeds many things, the most important of which being a shared goal. While a happy employee looks to further their sense of well-being, an engaged workforce plan and facilitate the flow of ideas towards a shared goal; the growth of your business. The difference of the two being the speed and quality of ideas. Connected and working towards a shared goal, engaged employees take pride in not only the outcome but its quality.
Retention and Growth
With a heavy focus on employee training and growth, the simple fact is that when a happy employee reaches their perceived limit they often look for external challenges to grow their personal development. This is purely due to the fact that their happiness comes from just that – their personal happiness. For a connected employee, their growth and personal development share a vested interest with the company their work for. Or put simply, when they look grow personally and professionally, your business grows and benefits with it.
How to Grow Each
For a company with less of a focus on engagement, a company that can still run quite well, maintaining a happy workforce is often through physical incentives, an extra day or few of vacation time, gift vouchers or Groupon coupons for various local stores or even a small pay increase. These are often great ways to grow employee happiness and have seen a tremendous return on what is often little investment.
Growing an Engaged Workforce
For companies looking to grow their employee engagement the challenge is a little tougher, however by no means unachievable. To do this, the success of the business if often aligned with their growth. More than just aligning their bonuses and pay increases with company profits, programs for engagement often have to look further. Providing employees with a clear path for advancement through any work they complete or that is accomplished by the company is often the most taken track. With leaders always looking to move forward, the removal of any ceilings plays the biggest part. Providing leaders with growth outside the business through acquisition can be a viable way to not only retain talent but as each leader continues through the business, so too does their connection.
It doesn’t matter which company you are looking to run as each provide both positives and negatives throughout. The important aspect of managing a workforce is identifying which workforce works best for you business and that you grow it accordingly.