Employee engagement refers to the extent to which employees feel motivated, connected, and committed to their work and the organization they are a part of. Engaged employees are enthusiastic about their roles, take pride in their contributions, and are willing to go the extra mile to achieve organizational goals. They are emotionally invested in their work and often exhibit higher levels of productivity, creativity, and job satisfaction.
Employee happiness, on the other hand, pertains to the overall emotional well-being and contentment of employees within their work environment. It encompasses factors such as job satisfaction, work-life balance, positive relationships with colleagues and supervisors, a supportive work culture, and opportunities for personal and professional growth. When employees are happy, they are more likely to experience lower levels of stress, higher job performance, and greater loyalty to the organization.
Both employee engagement and happiness are crucial for organizational success, as they contribute to improved productivity, reduced turnover, enhanced creativity, and a positive workplace atmosphere. Organizations that prioritize these factors tend to foster a more motivated, productive, and satisfied workforce.
Measuring happiness & engagement
Happiness is a specific emotion that everyone experiences differently. What makes one person feel happy may be less relevant to another. So when an employee satisfaction survey simply asks how happy someone feels, you get an answer that can cover a variety of aspects. It is therefore important to use a good measurement scale to measure both positive and negative feelings, as well as engagement.
Drivers of happiness & engagement
Much scientific research has been done on the “drivers” behind happiness and engagement. By analyzing these drivers in relation to current work happiness and engagement, you can determine what factors your organization needs to work on to increase employee work happiness and engagement.
People within your organization may need to work on different drivers on different levels. Some teams may need to work on “psychological safety” while in another business unit, “meaning-based leadership” or “empowerment” may need attention. The Happiness & Engagement Scan shows you exactly where you need to work on which driver within the organization.
- Organizational support: do employees feel that the organization supports their interests and needs?
- Meaning-based leadership: Can the leader give meaning to strategy for the team by connecting it to values?
- Opportunities for development: does employee experience opportunities for professional development?
- Recognition: are efforts and achievements recognized in an explicit way?
- Collegiate relationships: are colleagues there for each other or do they feel like they are alone?
- Empowering leadership: how much autonomy do employees have in their work? To what extent are they encouraged to follow their own judgment?
The benefits of happiness & engagement:
Employees who feel more engaged perform better. They are more creative, they are better able to solve problems, they are more motivated to learn, and they are more tenacious when faced with setbacks. More generally, with more heart for work, employees are more focused on delivering quality in their work, and higher-quality performance logically follows.
For example, extensive research at the Univeristy of Oxford found that employees who feel happy while performing their tasks are 13% more productive.
In addition, a great advantage of employees with heart for the organization is their increased loyalty. They are less likely to leave the organization, thus saving the organization the problems of high employee turnover.
Employees with more heart for the organization also behave more like “ambassadors” of the organization by positively highlighting the employer in contacts with people outside the organization.
The Happiness & Engagement Scan
Here’s what you can expect when we execute a Do Better Scan:
- Flawless survey operation: You get the professional implementation of the Do Better Scan in your organization. We provide a smooth and service-oriented online survey, in a way where you don’t have to worry about anything.
- Do Better Dashboards: You get crystal-clear and fine-grained insight into metrics and drivers in a simple and easy-to-read dashboard.
- Systemic diagnosis and surgical precision: You find out what, according to the data, are the strongest drivers of are for the organization as a whole. This systemic diagnosis tells you exactly where to focus your improvement interventions.
- Laser focused action perspective: In relation to measured outcomes, the Do Better Dashboard also shows measures of the critical drivers of vitality. In this way, each team learns how vital the organization as a whole is, what the systemic causes of this outcome are, and what actions are needed locally to contribute to a better outcome at the team level.
Want to learn how our approach can help your organization? Then schedule a free demo. We’ll be happy to tell you about how we work, tooling and the impact you can make.
Example dashboard
The strength of our Do Better Scan lies in the combination of its scientific background and its simplicity. Teams have insight into improvement potential at a glance. The dashboard below gives an impression of the insights that can be shared at the team level.
Next step
Curious about the details of the Do Better Scan Happiness & Engagement? Download the product sheet with more information.
Related publications
Scientific research related to this topic:
Intergroup knowledge integration: the role of meta-knowledge and boundary spanners
A motivated information processing perspective on the antecedents of empowering leadership
