Your Employees Are Happy . . . And Other Popular Myths!

Are your employees really happy? What does “happy” actually mean? Are we even asking the correct question? Perhaps we should ask; “Are your employees engaged at work?”

According to Gallup only 31% of US workers are engaged at work (the numbers in Canada are similar to this). This is scary! It means that 69% of our workers are either not engaged or, worse yet, actively disengaged. This is costing our economy billions of dollars each year!

Being happy or satisfied at work is not the same thing as being engaged. According to Gallup, paying people high wages, providing Ping-Pong tables and free meals may result in “happy” employees and high employee satisfaction survey scores but it does not mean that your employees are engaged and productive. Jim Clifton stated; “A winning culture is one of engagement and individual contribution to an important mission and purpose. Human beings are not looking for company-bought goodies — they are looking for meaningful, fulfilling work. It is the new great global dream — to have a good job, not a free lunch. The dream is to have a job in which you work for a great manager; where you constantly develop; and where you can use your God-given strengths every single day.

This is supported by Daniel Pink  in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, where he wrote that employees in today’s world need three things to be fully successful.

  1. Mastery – the ability to leverage your strengths in your role and become the best you can be in that role
  2. Autonomy – the ability to work without constant supervision and micromanagement
  3. Purpose – understanding what the purpose is for the business and how your role contributes to this purpose

So where do you think your workplace is at?

Just for fun, I thought I would create two brief online surveys; one for managers and one for employees. Take a minute and complete these surveys and pass the links to as many people as possible. I will publish the results in my blog post next week. (Note that you can be both a manager/leader and an employee)

Managers/Leaders: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5LP3DYX

Employees: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5725YBX

 

Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.

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