How to boost employee happiness

Scientists have discovered that physical and mental health are closely tied together, so employers can no longer focus on just physical health if they want to improve the wellbeing of their employees. A big part of employee wellbeing is impacted by a person’s happiness. Plus, employee happiness can affect work environments, and your bottom line. Here’s why:

Happy employees show up: When an employee is happy and engaged, they show up to work. Highly engaged teams see a 41% decrease in absenteeism. (1)

Happy employees stay: Employees who are happy and enjoy their workplace tend to stay longer. In fact, teams with high engagement levels see 59% less turnover. (1) Training new employees is expensive, so keeping them longer helps your bottom line.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to a person’s happiness. And while you can’t control these aspects of your employees’ lives, you can provide them with tools to manage them, leading to happier employees and a healthier bottom line. Here are four things that can help you make your employees happier.

1. Exercise
We’ve all heard that exercise helps release endorphins and endorphins make us happy, but happiness is a bit of a squishy concept. Researchers at the University of Michigan combined data from multiple past studies and found a correlation between being physically active and being happy. (2)

Additionally, studies have shown that physical activity can actually reduce the likelihood of depression and help maintain mental health as we age. Exercise also appears to be an effective treatment for a range of mental health conditions such as mild to moderate depression, dementia, and anxiety and even reduces cognitive issues in schizophrenia. (3)

There are many ways you can encourage employees to be more physically fit in the workplace. Providing a fitness center in your office or access to a virtual fitness solution can help remove barriers to starting and maintaining an exercise program.

2. Nutrition
Like exercise, nutrition affects the levels of certain chemicals in our brain, affecting a person’s happiness. Eating healthy and nutritious foods can help improve a person’s mood, focus, energy levels, memory and alertness. (4) Nutrition also plays an important role in a person’s physical health. When people feel better about themselves and are more confident, they are happier.
Employers can encourage healthy eating habits and proper nutrition by providing various wellness programs. Providing education and wellness challenges teach employees what to do and encourage them to put that knowledge into practice.

3. Sleep
How do you feel after a bad night of sleep? Are you feeling good and ready to take on your day, or do you feel grumpy or a bit foggy? Most of us have experienced a bad night of sleep and have seen firsthand how that affected our mood and cognitive ability the next day.

Sleep has a huge effect on a person’s mood and mental wellbeing. Sleep deprived people feel more irritable, angry, hostile, stressed, sad and mentally exhausted. Plus, a lack of sleep makes people less able to control their emotional reactions to situations, making them more likely to react negatively when something doesn’t go well for them. And the kicker is that people who are sleep deprived are less likely to get the positive emotional benefits of a positive experience. (5)

All of this leads to unhappy employees with a lack of energy, which can greatly affect the quality of their work and their relationships with customers and colleagues. Employers can provide education through wellness programming on stress management and sleep strategies to help support healthy sleep habits. Being more physically active can also help people get a better night’s sleep, so providing access to fitness programs can help.

4. Injuries/Pain
When a person is in pain it can affect their mood and their ability to partake in everyday activities. Pain can come from a number of sources including injury or illness. Pain that lasts longer than three months or beyond the normal healing time for an illness or injury is known as chronic pain. Chronic pain has been linked to numerous physical and mental conditions and contributes to high health care costs and lost productivity. According to the Center for Disease Control, as many as 20% of U.S. adults have chronic pain and 8% have high-impact chronic pain. (6)

One way employers can help their employees, is by reducing injuries from happening in the first place with ergonomic workstations and by implementing an injury prevention program. Employers can also look at injury treatment programs, which can reduce time away from work and help get employees back to work more quickly.

Invest in your employees’ happiness
Today's fast-paced workplace makes investing in your employees' happiness, mental and physical health more important than ever. Exercise can have a profound impact on mental health, and numerous studies have shown its positive effects on emotional wellbeing.

Contact us today to learn how we can help make your employees happier and your bottom line healthier.