Do you know how your employees feel?

Performance reviews and daily interactions with your employees give you a limited amount of information. They can tell you what your employees are doing, how well they’re performing or when they’re most productive.

But a question that sometimes creeps in the corner of a manager’s mind is “How do my employees feel?” Because as much information as you might get from knowing what they’re doing, finding out how they feel about their job, about the office and about you is the really valuable piece of information.

Smart managers know that…

1.      People need to be valued

Otherwise they leave. It’s quite straight forward actually. The people working for you don’t want to feel easily replaceable and unappreciated. On the contrary, the more you value their work and their efforts, the more productive and loyal they’ll be.

A great way to show that you appreciate their contribution is to emphasize on their unique strengths. What they, in particular, bring as an added value to you team.

2.      People want to know that you care

Like John Legend said, apathy’s not so cool anymore. How can an employee give their best and focus their efforts if they can’t connect to the people they work with? As a manager, they need to be able to trust you. If you don’t show them you’re human and you do care about their work and their lives, they’ll settle for being uninvolved. Or worse, they’ll leave.

“If leaders disregard the importance of connecting with employees, they lose the benefit of a dedicated, long-term team.”

John Hall, Forbes

  3.      People want to talk to you

Perception is really important in every relationship, especially in a work relationship. Every manager gets to decide how they want to be perceived and they usually pick a combination of strong, confident, knowledgeable or even arrogant. Vulnerable is almost never on that list, preventing you from connecting with those around you.

Research professor Brené Brown describes the ways uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure are crucial to a successful leadership journey. People need to talk to you, to relate to your experience, to understand your views and your actions.

Start with these 14 phrases that really improve morale, documented by former CEO Todd Patkin in his book: Finding Happiness: One Man’s Quest to Beat Depression and Anxiety and–Finally–Let the Sunshine In.

Is that true for your team?

How do you know if all of the above apply to your team? What you should be thinking right now is “Ok, so what does my team need from me?”.

I can’t answer that but they can. You need to find out how your employees feel, connect with them and then act on that information.

Your employees are your lifeline. A dynamic, unpredictable lifeline that can only spike up with productivity and performance when it’s sustained by communication, development and happiness at work.

Start off by collecting relevant information

Hppy gives you an overview how people feel by tracking daily moods registered in the workplace. The system collects and aggregates the moods in a Happiness Index that gives us a clear indication of how people feel at work.

It is real data in real time, offering you the opportunity to know how your employees feel at work.

As a manager, you should go through the Team Status overview that allows you to see individual evolutions in moods and keep an eye out for disengaged employees who present a bigger turnover risk.

The system is anonymous, so employees are confident in sharing their moods and giving anonymous feedback. But if you are concerned about a certain mood history just ask for a meeting with that person and the system will send them an invite, maintaining their anonymity. Their identity is only disclosed to you if they agree to attend that meeting and will connect you so you can have a more in depth discussion.

The advantage of using Hppy in employee engagement is that it offers you real-time information and a tracked history of how employees feel at work, so that you, as a manager, can use it for real-time solutions that can be implemented straight away.

Bottom-line

The more invest in your employee’s wellbeing, is a direct return on your company end result, but it is also a simpler way to manage your team and understand how you can improve what you do.

Call it talent retention or driving company performance, at the end of the day it’s about the people who are working with you. It’s important for you to know how they feel and how you can be a better leader.