By now you should be aware that you have one important asset: your employees! Cases like Southwest Airlines and Incentro prove that by putting your people first, you do achieve the results you aspire to.
So measuring the happiness of your most important asset is something to take seriously. But what once you have those results? A thick report does not make your people happier. Research shows that 93% of those in work indicate that they can take responsibility for increasing their happiness at work. So, give them space and start prototypes!
Start measuring your job satisfaction!
When you want to work on happiness at work, measuring how you are doing is a good step to take. By measuring this, you kill two birds with one stone. First of all, you get to know how your organization is doing: are your employees actually happy? What contributes to work happiness and what diminishes it? Secondly, by setting out a professional scan you also make it clear that you take this subject seriously. This is of course a great way to give work happiness an important place in your organization and to make it clear that you intend to work on this as well.
Ultimately, this scan leads to a report, an aggregated overview of your job satisfaction. This can be done on a team or departmental level, so you immediately know where they stand. But there you are with the report in your hands. How to proceed?
Start the process, start with prototyping
Companies still have a tendency to tackle changes as projects. They initiate major changes themselves on the basis of aggregated data following the report. Changes to job satisfaction are treated as change projects, whereas this should be a process. Step by step towards a better work environment. In addition, 93% of the workers indicate that they know how to increase their own job satisfaction! This is a huge opportunity!
Give your employees the opportunity to change step by step. By means of small experiments. Start small. Let them start one as an individual or as a team with 1 tension. Then the process begins, the creation of the first experiment. A radical change on a non-radical scale. Let the Prototyping.Work methodology do its work!
Reflect and scale
A change is not always (immediately) successful. So reflection is an important part of your success. Employees learn to be critical on their own initiative and also to adjust the experiment if necessary. Failure isn’t an option, failure is the option.
And if it is a success? Celebrate! And scale. Make it a fixed routine or share your experiment with other teams or team members. Who knows, maybe your experiment will be applied throughout the whole organization! That will make you really happy!
And what happens after my first experiment?
There is no end. As indicated above, changing is not a project, it is a process. The methodology creates a rhythm of change, a change mindset. Employees anchor this way of changing in their daily way of working so that they can make a real impact. Use the 80-20 rule for this. 80 percent work IN your organization, 20 percent work ON your organization.
This also means that your employees will need more freedom of regulation to make their own work even more enjoyable. So as a leader, you need to learn to let go: stop giving control and trust. But not directly, but step by step! Use the methodology to find your own way to more trust and ultimately change capacity for your employees. On to an even happier workplace!
Start small, start now!
So, do you have a nice report with all kinds of good recommendations in it? Great! All you have to do is give your employees the space to start experimenting towards a better workplace! On to more work happiness!
Also for this big challenge: Please do not hesitate to start. Start small and start now. Begin with prototyping towards your ideal situation using the Prototyping.Work methodology.
