Are you ready to welcome employees back to your facility? In addition to meeting requirements for their physical safety, it’s important to consider their mental well-being. Why? Because happy employees improve organizational performance.
In 2016, The Myers-Briggs Company began a multiyear effort to examine the potential impact on organizations of well-being at work. They included a set of established organizational outcome measures related to how well a company performs. The study found workplace well-being has a direct effect on organizational performance.
“Happy employees are more satisfied with their jobs, more willing to do things not in their job description and are less likely to resign,” said Melissa Summer, an MBTI-certified professional at The Myers-Briggs Company.
The Myers-Briggs study found that workplace well-being translates to higher:
- Job Satisfaction is themeasure of how happy employees are with the job they do every day. Study results revealed that employee workplace well-being had a .787 correlation with their job satisfaction. For every increase in well-being, there is a positive increase in how employees rate their job satisfaction.
- Organizational Citizenship Behaviors are the things employees do that are above and beyond their job descriptions. For example, helping out a co-worker or volunteering for a committee. Companies with employees that demonstrate a high level of individual organizational citizenship behavior tend to have higher organizational performance.
- Employee Retention is an extremely important factor because the cost to find and replace an employee who leaves the company often starts around 150% of their salary. “When good employees leave, critical projects can be delayed, as there’s a learning curve for new employees. And even when that new employee gets up to speed, the team dynamics have changed,” said Summer.
Research reveals if employees are happy
To help retain staff and improve overall organizational performance, Summer suggests conducting research into the emotional bond employees have with your organization. “Do they like the people they work with? Do they like their supervisor? Does your company’s mission and values align with theirs? Employees that have an emotional bond with their employers are more likely to stay on longer, even if conditions are less than perfect, because they’re loyal and want to stay,” she said.
If you’re interested in conducting a survey about how your employees feel about working at your company, we can help you with that. Surveying employees is similar to the research we’ve done for our clients to determine if their customers are happy. In both cases, as we’re a neutral party, customers and employees will often tell us things they don’t want to tell you directly. In the long run, research projects such as these pay for themselves in improved operational performance for your company.
