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One thing companies are always concerned with is productivity. How can managers increase their productivity? How can they increase their employees productivity? Companies along with scientists have spent huge sums of money trying to figure out the key to not only productivity but success—both on an individual and company wide level.
It is no secret that happy employees are more productive and overall better employees. Employees that identify as low well-being are seven times more likely to be absent from work and seven times more likely to be looking for a new job. This leads to an overall lack of productivity from what is known as presenteeism. Presenteeism is when employees physically show up to work but lack productivity because they may be having any multitude of personal problems.
For businesses it is extremely important to consider the happiness of their employees. Teams that have a been measured to have a higher level of happiness outperform teams that do not in virtually every category. Because happiness is hard to quantify it has largely been ignored in the business community. Ignoring the happiness factor is of great disadvantage to a company. This is especially true because companies actually have a substantial amount of influence over a person’s happiness. Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, identified five key elements to well-being: positivity, engagement, relationships, meaning or purpose, and accomplishment—known as PERMA. Companies play a role in nearly all of these areas and can have a huge impact on a person’s engagement, purpose, and accomplishment.
What is even more interesting is that these tend to predict happiness in the majority of all humans. Though the process of creating these fundamental elements may differ across cultures it is extremely relevant for international businesses. Companies must invest more in their employees if they want to see greater financial results. Investing does not just mean money, but also time and energy into making sure the fundamental needs of their employees are met. For a more in depth view on how happiness affects the workplace read Lincoln Financial Group’s study "Happiness and the Bottom Line".
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