We have all had this experience I bet. You are feeling really good and the day is going so well. Work seems easy and your step even feels lighter. What causes this feeling?  I will wager that you are feeling truly happy. There are a lot of reasons you might be feeling this way, but let’s enjoy it for now. 

You open up your laptop and you get to work.  You have some calls to make, and before you know it they are done. That was easy. You got appointments set and felt confident in the explanations you gave to all the questions that came your way. Thinking to yourself, you think, this was a pretty great morning! 

You take a break, grab a bite to eat and now your back at it. The afternoon goes as well as the morning.  Your productivity has not waned at all. If anything, you feel energized and although you have put in your full day’s work, you are not feeling drained. There is plenty of you left to give your family now that work is done for the day.

A day like I have just described is something that I think most people want to have on their job. The tasks are challenging but we feel prepared for them. We have meaningful interactions with others whether they are fellow employees or customers, and it feels authentic and right. When we look back on how successful we were during the day, it is almost surprising. 

Let’s talk about what could be happening here. Happiness. That’s right happiness. In a study recently done in the UK, happy employees are more productive. In one example, the productivity metric was converting telephone calls into sales. Happier people converted more calls to sales. When employees rated their levels of happiness, higher levels corresponded to greater productivity. The study called out that these happy workers did not work more or longer than their less happy counterparts. They were more successful during the hours they were working. The researchers concluded that happiness at work was not only good for those workers but clearly it was better for the employer. Happiness pays off for everyone. 

Conversely, unhappy workers are less productive and are more likely to quit and leave their employment.  Turnover varies by job title and by industry, but it is safe to say that high turnover is not good for business.  In fact, any turnover is costly to a company. When a small business loses an employee, the cost can have a significant impact on the business. Often when a valuable employee leaves a small business, they can take a lot of knowledge with them that cannot be easily found available in the employees left. 

Employees that leave a larger company also are costly. It is estimated that the cost of losing an employee to turnover costs 6-8 months of their salary to hire and train a replacement.  If an employee earns $60K per year, that means it costs $45K to replace them. I would argue that it takes more than 6-8 months for a new employee to master their new role. It was my experience that true mastery of an inside sales or business development role takes 12 months or more. 

In the weeks to come I will explore further what leads to happiness on the job and what employers might want to consider to help their employees be happier.

Reference:  Happy workers are 13% more productive , by the University of Oxford

Linked In post: Happy workers are 13% more productive