How to Create a "Happy" Work Environment ("Fulfilled" versus Satisfied)?

‘Work environment’ is probably the most talked-about subject when it comes to employee development. But current work scenarios do not seem to care much about the happiness factor of their workplace.

We feel it is essential to create a workplace that is fulfilling, and which encourages the employees to have better relationships at work. This can work like magic when it comes to scaling your business and making it a more profitable one.

So, in this post, we are going to take a deep dive into what makes a workplace happier and what is it that the present leaders should do to make sure their team gets the best work environment ever.

What Does Happiness At Work Mean?

Happiness at the workplace should be defined while taking into consideration the overall sense of enjoyment at work, the ability of the team to gracefully handle setbacks, connecting with everyone amicably, and finally, that your work not just matters to yourself, but also to your organization and beyond. The happiness at work can be tied to every desirable outcome that the employees, employer, workplace, and the complete organization hope for. One can tie the feeling of happiness with being healthy and becoming more creative and efficient in solving problems; producing more with less and innovating his way to the top of the career. But, what about when the same ‘happy’ people at work, face setbacks? Well, in the face of adversity, these people tend to see the bigger picture and have a low inclination towards stress. They have better-coping abilities and can recover from adverse conditions with ease. Not just that, happiness at work can also result in people getting better at resolving internal and external conflicts.

Also, when you work towards making your workplace a happy place, you indirectly are making people happier and more likable. They’ll become more trustworthy and deserving of better roles as they develop leadership qualities in them.

Now, that we have seen what happiness at work mean and what it brings with itself, it’s important to know how to go around this whole ‘happiness’ thing without messing your workplace up.

How to Work Towards Happiness at Work?

Well, there’s no simple answer to this question. But, if you will study different workplaces and try to match the results, four key pillars of happiness at work will emerge. These are – Purpose, Engagement, Resilience, and Kindness. These happiness pillars, as we call them, affect the workplace on personal, social, and structural levels. Let’s discuss them, shall we?

1. Purpose
   ‍When you talk about the core values of an employee, ‘purpose’ tends to be a great reflection of what they give more importance to. Therefore, it is important to align their everyday behaviors and decisions with their core values. This generally leads to making people at work feel more purposeful,. Morten Hansen, a management professor at UC Berkley, defines purpose in a way that really makes sense to both individual and organizational levels. He tells that people who have a sense of purpose are the ones who feel they are making valuable contributions to the organization or society, providing meaning to lives and not harming anyone.
2. Engagement
   ‍People generally enjoy at work when they feel that they are being engaged in the decision made by the organization. To increase engagement at work, leaders should prioritize fun, humor, creativity, and playfulness at work. Also, giving people more ownership over what they are going to do on a daily basis, schedules, tasks, personal development, and more can significantly improve their engagement as now they feel that they have control over their job at the workplace. Lastly, it’s important for leaders to work at making schedules that are less hectic, and a working space that is more immersive to the flow of work.
3. Resilience
   ‍The overall happiness at work, as mentioned earlier, has a lot to do with people’s ability to cope and learn from setbacks, failures, and disappointments. Resilience doesn’t mean working in a way that prevents setbacks and difficulties. It means creating better ways to overcome challenges and make the workplace an authentic fighting-spirit. One way to implement these groundbreaking changes to your workplace is encouraging people to become more and more mindful to get over the learned habits of self-criticizing or playing the blame-game, or feeling disappointed by thinking about the past setbacks and upsets. These habits can make it really hard for people to work as a team. Therefore, it is important to weave mindfulness into the work environment.
4. Kindness
   ‍Most people spend almost 40% of their lives at work. To make the workplace their ‘second home’ in truest of its feeling, it is important to make people orient their thoughts and actions towards caring for their colleagues. Being kind to everyone around you will make your employees develop dignity and respect. Not just kindness, the people at work should practice empathy, compassion, and gratitude to make their work environment and relationships trustable. This will result in more commitment and productivity from the employees and will definitely make your workplace essentially a happier place to be.

7 Best Practices for Leaders to Create a Happy Workplace Environment

1. Employee Development
   ‍Every action and decision taken by the leaders at a workplace should be towards the betterment and development of their employees and workplace. A happier workplace is the one that is completely committed to developing employee-management and employee-employee relationships. There is no sure-shot way to get this right but to experiment with different plans, failing, learning, and then experimenting more. The process of the employee development should, however, follow the 4 pillars of making a happy workplace.
2. Flexibility and Understanding
   ‍Innovation and new ideas develop in an organization that provides their employees with great flexibility at work. The employees are happier when their supervisors give them an ample amount of room to make mistakes and experiment with their work. Also, employees that find their organization to be very much willing to take risks of allowing them to make mistakes, tend to have a great commitment towards the company goals and objectives.

Here’s a chart that will help you understand what drives employees to produce great work.

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1. Avoiding Work BurnoutLeaders at work should work overtime to develop ideas and plans that could help their team to experience less work burnout. It is not just about the number of hours they spent at work, but also about how they feel while they are at the job. Do they feel appreciated when they put in extra time and effort to get tasks done? If your employees do not feel appreciated or have doubt if they even matter to the company, they will resent spending every extra second they are at your office working.
2. Getting Rid of ObstaclesThe work employees do at your workplace should be seamless and have no obstacles that disturb their flow and not help them achieve their level of productivity. Obstacles in a work environment most certainly result in low job satisfaction. Leaders and management should not wait for exit interviews to know what’s wrong in the company but should act proactively to figure out the problems employee face when working in their organization.
3. Resolving ConflictsLike every other family on the planet, your office family will also have conflicts that require attention and positive reinforcement. Leaders should not assume that a happy workplace is essentially a place with zero conflicts. Conflicts are sometimes passive and can become dominant at a very inappropriate moment. This has to be avoided at all costs. The only way to go around solving conflicts is to make sure the management works in a constructive manner – making employees feel safe sharing the conflicts they experience at work.
4. Meaningful WorkTo cultivate a happier work environment, leaders need to develop programs that make the employees more mindful at work. This can effectively help them tie meaning to their work – something which is quite lacking in the present business organizations around the globe. The relationship between happiness and meaning is profound and should be well understood to make your employees feel that their work is providing great meaning to the organization. This feeling and sense of contribution leads to a highly gratifying job satisfaction
5. Being AppreciatedA study done on Globoforce, a software manufacturing company, found that a staggering 80% of the employees feel that being appreciated and recognized for the work they do in the organization makes them feel more satisfied and cared for. If leaders want to make the organization a better place to work, they need to come up with a policy that makes sure the people who are contributing to the betterment of the organization get recognized and rewarded regularly. Employees at an organization need to know that their happiness in the company matters more than anything else and you will see their productivity shooting through the roof.

WorkSocial's Mission to Bring Happiness Back to Work

‘Happiness at Work’ is a cornerstone that people attached to WorkSocial feel most proud of. Their ability to boost autonomy and productivity by having great personal connections with the workers has helped them create a coworking space that is immersive, more engaging, and motivating.

Their mission to bring happiness back to work is backed by the actions taken to provide the people working at their coworking space a sense of belongingness that goes a long way in helping them build strong connections and establish great friendships within the work sphere.

Final Verdict

It’s true that today employees feel a high level of disengagement with their organizations and have to fight for their interests and their contributions to be noticed and cared for. It’s a reality that their previous generations sensed but did not give it any attention. Now, when more and more purpose-driven millennials and Generation Z are entering the work culture, it will become a challenge for leaders and managers to create a healthy and happy workplace.

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