I am passionate about helping people find their happiness at work.
My personal mission is help people find happiness at work, as I believe happier employees are more engaged employees, and more engaged employees deliver better results.
Although it’s easy for me to believe this is a compelling point of view, this newsletter is here to provide my theory with some credibility, and how EVP can support achieving this viewpoint. This edition in particular is for the sceptics. Those that might be thinking ‘you’re full of sh*t’, but also could at least agree ‘achieving happiness at work is a better work place.’
So, first things first:
I’m not telling you to just ‘be happy’ at work.
I get it. I do. Just saying ‘be happy’ does not take into consideration what’s going on in someone’s personal life, with their mental health, and all of the other external factors that impact our overall happiness.
Just because I’ve found happiness at work, and just because I believe it’s infectious, my perspective alone is not a convincing enough argument. What makes me happy at work might not make you happy at work, and that’s ok.
In addition, there are some days where all of us – including me – just aren’t in the mood for the positive person in the room. So if you’re having ‘just one of those days’, come back to this article tomorrow.
To give you a bit of background, there was a point in time where I was a pretty unhappy person. I was fortunate that I found my personal ‘happy place’ at work, in a work environment and setting, and I know not everyone can do that OR is working in a supportive environment.
For this reason you’ll notice I lead this newsletter by saying I help people FIND their happiness at work.
I don’t claim to have the answer, but I help people find a different perspective that may improve happiness with the work they do, the company they work for, or if all else fails, when to move on. If you’re already happy at work, I look at how you can ‘bottle’ that positivity and lean into it.
The questions I ask are what’s important, how can you measure what makes you most happy at work, and – if not – when is the time to quit?
This mission started with a question from a real exit interview I had a while ago, and the epiphany I had following that meeting.
“What’s your Vegas”
The exit interview started with a publishing employee, who we’re going to call Ernie (not their real name, it’s my Son’s middle name though.. great right?!).
Ernie told me how fed up they were with our Sales team. The Sales team? God they didn’t like our sales team.
There were other axes to grind, but they were particularly passionate about the Sales team getting preferential treatment, and being able to get trips to Vegas.
I asked Ernie: Did they know why the Sales team had Vegas trips?
They didn’t know.
I asked Ernie if they wanted to go to Vegas?
They said no (ABSOLUTELY NOT, they couldn’t think of anything worse than a Vegas trip)
I asked Ernie, well ‘What’s your Vegas?’..
They didn’t have an answer.
They were so fixated on what other people were getting in another team, yet they didn’t know exactly what they wanted from work. This lack of direction wasn’t necessarily Ernie’s fault, and is quite common in businesses.
They just hadn’t been asked the question ‘what do you want from work?’. I have a whole video on this here
At an exit interview, where often this can be the first time the question is asked, it’s too late. These questions can be asked before an employee starts. You can find out if you’re aligned with what they’re looking, and if understood correctly you’ll put off a lot more candidates, but you’ll save a lot of time and money on hiring mistakes (in an instance where what a candidate is looking for the company doesn’t offer it).
Often, companies spend a lot of time, effort, and on benefits and reward, setting goals and supporting with personal goals, but often don’t ask employees what’s important to them.
So how do you keep everyone happy at work if everyone wants something different?
In short, you can’t. It’s good to be absolutely clear on your company goals, mission, vision and values. To communicate effectively why someone SHOULD work at your company, but also why they SHOULDN’T.
The clearer you are with what you offer people, the more likely you are to engage with them, and the happier they will be. It’s fine if not everyone signs up to your cycle to work scheme, or wants to go to Vegas, as long as they’re aligned with your non-negotiables to success.
Once you’ve defined what’s important to your business, the next step is to engage with your workforce and understand; “of all the benefits, rewards, and ‘things we offer’ as a company, what is 1. Most important, and 2. How well do you deliver on those things”
When answering that question, everything you do can plotted out into a grid that looks something like this:
In Ernie’s case, Vegas to them wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t important (bottom left). There were other benefits that were good but also weren’t important (top left).
Having this grid, you can help your workforce first focus on more important things to them (right hand side) – so in Ernie’s case, they loved that they could make an impact, they got to work with great colleagues/experts, and were progressing their career until that point.
Now this was an exit interview, so we’re not necessarily saying we would have converted Ernie (or anyone) to stay by knowing this information, but it does help us spot potential leavers, why people are engaged (or disengaged), and how we can better align current and future employees with our mission/goals.
Your EVP, or employee value proposition, is the top right area of that grid. What your employees perceive you do well, and is important to them. Leaning into this you can create more benefits/reward that more employees would position here, and you will improve engagement and happiness, help you strengthen your value as an organisation, and doing so improve results.
Do not neglect the bottom right of the grid – things that are important to your employees, that they perceive you are not delivering on – as this is your biggest risk area to losing employees.
I’m an advocate for EVP as I believe it covers all areas of the business, is non-anonymous, and can be utilised to understand engagement across your whole workforce.
“EVP is the balance of rewards and benefits that are received by employees in return for their performance in the workplace”
I firmly believe that EVP will shape the future of work.
I invite you to join me on this journey where together we’ll find out how we can improve happiness at work. Find more about happiness at work here.
Whether you agree or disagree, I welcome your engagement. Let’s explore the EVP way together!
Thank you for Reading
Joe