All managers keep track of profitability, revenue and customer complaints. But when building up their strategy how many of them make employee happiness at the workplace a significant priority? Not many. This is surprising seeing how every management student in the whole wide world blurts at every opportunity that ‘team’ is THE key to success.
If that is the case, then why is so little attention being paid at the workplace to the mental wellbeing and the emotions employees display toward the organization? It’s not difficult to understudy why. Dealing with employee emotions is hard work. Things cannot be easily quantified, and analyzed in the usual paradigm of cost-benefit analysis and ROI.
However, there is still hope. Lately a thought movement is taking shape where more and more managers (and scientists) are starting to show concern for the strong correlation between low workplace happiness and poor financial performance of companies.
Here are the facts:
1. 66% of satisfied employees put in extra effort at work.
2. You need at least 3 hours of therapy to BEGIN relieving depression or anxiety.
3. Unsatisfied employees are 11 times more likely to move to a new organization.
4. 58% of employees seldom, if ever receive thanks from their manager.
5. 100 unhappy employees cost $ 390,000/year in lost productivity. (Kansas State University, Dr. Thomas Wright)
6. 100,000 the average cost to lose and retrain just one employee. (Society for Human Resources Job Satisfaction Survey – 2005)
7. Happy workers are 22% more productive than unhappy workers. (Andrew Oswald, prof, Warwick Business School)
8. Happy workers are 28,4% less absent . This means 12.3 days and $619/year per happy employee. (Kathryn Rost, PhD, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center)
9. $119,038 – value of one unhappy employee becoming a happy employee (Conservative Annual Estimations by Choose People, based on $80k annual salary)
And, finally,
10. Because measuring workplace happiness is basically free compared to the costs (direct and opportunity) you would have by not doing it.
Image via StockSnap.io under C.C.0 license
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