Happiness at work: The six-stage framework for building a happy and productive workforce
(approx six minute read)
The World Mental Health Day discover former Waitrose managing director Mark Price's six-stage framework for creating a happy workforce. Learn how employee happiness leads to higher productivity, better company culture, and lower staff turnover.
Image by freepik
It’s World Mental Health Day. This year it's about workplace mental health.
To acknowledge the day we're sharing a six-stage framework for building a happy workforce because you'd like to think that if a person is happy at work, that will positively impact their mental health. Hopefully.
So how important is a happy workforce?
“When I was running Waitrose and John Lewis, in our monthly board meetings this was the first measure for me. How are our people?” says former Waitrose boss Mark Price.
Price was speaking on a recent episode of the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast presented by Bruce Daisley where he was discussing his new book Happiness Economics.
We found it such a fascinating listen, we’ve summarised the conversation below.
About Mark Price
So who is Mark Price and why should we care what he’s got to say?
Price is the former managing director of Waitrose and Deputy Chairman of John Lewis. With a goal of worker happiness, he made it the fastest-growing, most profitable supermarket in the UK.
He’s since gone on to build the world’s largest live workplace happiness database (six years of research, 1000 companies, 26 sectors, 106 countries) and the UK’s largest jobs marketplace, WorkL. His company has surveyed millions of workers across the globe to find out how happy people are in their job.
Feels like he’s reasonably well placed to talk on the topic then.
Why is happiness important at work? A productive team
“The productivity of the UK is the worst in the G7 and it correlates to the position of worker happiness,” says Price.
“With absolute confidence we can say, those with higher employee happiness have higher profits, higher productivity, lower staff turnover and lower staff sickness.”
How happy are workers globally?
Price estimates around 30-40 per cent of workers are genuinely happy in their jobs (millions of people have completed the WorkL survey). The rest have some degree of disillusionment.
WorkL’s data also suggests 28 per cent of workers are a flight risk, meaning they are looking to leave their job in the next 12 months.
Six stage framework for creating happy workers: how to create a happy workforce
Let’s get onto the juicy bit, Price’s six-stage framework.
Image by freepik
1. Reward and recognition
“Are you paid fairly, more importantly, do you think you’re paid fairly and do you get recognised when you do something well?” asks Price.
“Pay reward is a hygiene factor. If you’re paid five per cent less than you think you’re worth, it niggles at you everyday. If you’re paid five per cent more than you think you’re worth, you don’t go into work and work harder.
“Pay is about mitigating discontent.
“The thing that really drives engagement and happiness at work is acknowledgement and recognition.
“Somebody noticing what you’re doing and saying ‘well done’. There’s a whole host of things you can do in business to formalise that or just have really good managers that notice what you’re doing.”
2. Information sharing
“This is the single most important aspect of happiness at work and comes in two parts,” explains Price.
“One, have you been trained well enough to do your job effectively? And the second is do you have information about the organisation you’re working in, the context in which you’re working, to do your job effectively.
“So a lot of people just think ‘I’m kept in the dark’, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here’ and just go into work and do their job and even then they’re not trained properly.
“If you want to be happy at work you need context and you need to be well trained.”
(read our article on The Five Stages of Team Development: How to Lead Your Team to High Performance)
3. Empowerment
“This is about having the information you need to do your job” says Price. “But also feeling trusted to do your job. Being able to ask questions and get straightforward responses.
“So once you’ve trained them, letting them get on with it, letting them make decisions, getting them wrong and learning from it.
“But it requires coaching, treating people with respect. Listening to their point of view. Empowering an individual to feel responsible for what they’re producing.”
4. Wellbeing
“Is generally feeling like your manager and the company you work for cares about your wellbeing. Mental, financial, physical,” says Price.
5. A sense of pride
“You understand your place in the organisation. You feel proud of the organisation and proud of the job you do,” says Price.
“We measure how you feel about your work. Would you recommend where you work to friends and colleagues?”
Image by Drazen Zigic on Freepik
6. Job satisfaction
“We break this down into three things,” explains price. “One, do I actually like my job, which is pretty obvious. Some people just don’t like the job they do.
“Two is about career development. Am I in something where I’m growing and learning. What we know is if people feel like they’re growing and learning they’re happier.
“The last one is a relationship with a line manager. A report by the Chartered Institute of Management says 82% of managers are accidental managers.
“They’ve been promoted either because they’ve been there a long time and know how something works or have a technical qualification. But what they’ve not been taught is how to manage people.”
Importance of a good line manager
Price believes a good line manager is imperative to every stage of the framework.
“All of the six stages are about a manager making sure that an individual feels well supported in their job.” says Price.
“Well trained in their job, rewarded for their job, acknowledged for their job, has a sense of pride in what they do, feel that they have a future and can be developed.
“All of those things can be important, it’s what any great coach would do and I think really good managers do.”