Employee Happiness

Employee happiness plays a very big role in an organization’s performance. There are just workplaces that seem to brew indifference the moment you enter their space. The people are just typing on their computers haplessly and attending to paperwork. Sometimes it’s even very difficult for them to get to smile. If you’re a client and that’s the kind of atmosphere that greets you everytime you enter the office, would you want to come back? Absolutely no.

Then there are exceptional offices, where every officegoer seems to absolutely love his/ her job. And boy, the employee happiness truly reflects in the business’ financial statements, which, in return, breeds employer happiness. So it’s a win-win thing.

In college, I learned that the most important asset of any business is the people. They can lose the building, the money and the trucks but as long as the topnotch employees stay, and they are happy, the business can surely cope and slowly “rise from the ashes”.

The thing is, it doesn’t take a lot to keep the employees happy. In fact, employee happiness is just like love—it’s not a big thing, rather, it’s a million little things. You don’t need to give a raise just to show them that they are valuable to the company. You can give little rewards or event those little I-care-for-you gifts. You can also issue special rewards to the outstanding members of the team.

Examples of inexpensive perks are car washes, massages, movie tickets, round table delivery lunches or a selection of hot beverage (tea and coffee in different varieties). You don’t even need to do it very often. Perhaps once or twice a month will do. It entails a little cost but the benefits surely outweigh it because the staff is more motivated and, generally, they are happier.

Lastly, try to talk to your employees or pass out a survey form that asks them to suggest activities or little office perks that they want. Study the results of the survey and try to see which perks you can give. You’ll be surprised to see how many little, inexpensive things can mean a lot to them. Then you can work on making them happier.

In college, we used the term employee morale to cover a more all-encompassing facet of employee happiness. However, for this article, I use employee happiness loosely because happiness is easily seen and it’s easier to quantify as well. At least for me.

Are your employees happy? Why/ why not? Let’s see what we can work out here. 

Woman, Are You Too Emotional at Work?

When I was working as a front desk, I had a boss I really didn’t get along with very well. She admitted that she really has a short temper and that it is highly likely that she would pour all her frustrations and angst on me because, I was, after all, her executive assistant. Yes, kinda like that alalay with a blazer. And a bachelor's degree.

There were days when she’d start the day scolding me; noticing the littlest things in the office no one goes to except me anyway. It was very difficult because during most days, we would clash, but then I was forced to smile and act cheerful despite how I felt. I was manning the front desk, after all. I quit after a month and a half, and my career has been so much better since.

Now that I’m more than happy with where I am and what I do, I still find myself getting a tad too emotional about work. It made me realize, was I really too emotional about work? Are women too emotional at work?

I read somewhere that there’s something called a Workplace Emotion Evaluation Profile. (Funny, it’s acronym is even WEEP.) The WEEP is a tool to help people take care of their levels of “emotional resiliency”. It asks questions that try to measure your capacity to be emotional at any given time of the day and cross references it to how you deal with work issues and home issues. It also teaches one how to deal with very strong emotions like sympathy, fear, anger or anxiety. For the one who finds herself getting too emotional, she can start by asking herself about the common things that usually gets her very emotional, and how these affect work.

A topnotch career coach and psychologist, Anne Kreamer, advises to keep in mind the acronym DING when dealing with workplace-related emotions. First, “take Deep breaths, Imagine what the other person is feeling, Name those emotions and, Go on”. She says it is important to take that moment to reflect and put yourself in another person’s shoes. Afterwards, learn to move on and move forward since there is so much room for more productivity anyway.

I say that DING is, by far, the best advice that I have read. It has helped me get over the stuff that stress me out. Most of the things that I deal with when it comes to work (events management) are people who are very hard to get along with and things (out of my control) that screw all my  plans up.

If you ask me, maybe the top reasons why women oftentimes get too emotional at work (or be judged as such) is because women are generally more sensitive and we pick up the stimuli that most men don’t. We are more keen to detail and, sadly, we are even the harsher critics of workplace emotion. I admit, when I used to see a female co-worker crying, I see her as weak and I am irritated by the situation because I think she perpetuates the stereotype of women in the workplace tagged as weak. Moreover, women are more pressured for perfection and women are burdened with so many expectations in order to be labeled “successful”. (But don’t let me do all the ranting here. This is not a feminist column after all, hehe.)

Love,

Your New PR Girl

Build the Best Virtual Team

It has been 3 or 4 years since my first internet-based job. I wrote, edited, marketed and made plans for companies, and published and executed them online. I also “met” many amazing co-workers whom I have become very good friends with as time went by; most of them are amazing artists and people from the Marketing and PR world. With the breadth of experience I have working online, it’s still astonishing how many people (especially executives) don’t see that it is really possible to build very strong virtual teams, and how much work can get done online. After all, the top candidates for a company job opening may not live in the same place, right?

With virtual teams, one is really driven to look at the skills of the person and in what s/he brings to the table rather than how “visible” they are. There’s no coffee break, less overhead and you can demand more of the brainwork rather than physical work. Because of this, your team can become more result oriented.

Now, no matter how good virtual teams may sound right now, this arrangement also has drawbacks. For example, many things that I didn’t like about working in virtual teams is having multiple time zones, trust issues and usually, there’s the need to overcommunicate most of the time. I think what every employer should do is to land with the right people and set realistic expectations for them as early as possible.

When hiring for a virtual team, employers must be on the lookout for people who are used to working independently and those who are internet-savvy as well. Schedule webcam interviews and ask about their experience and their internet connection. Try to measure, also, how trustworthy they are as early as you can. (Don’t worry, there’s Skype and there are free conference calls available. For team-based office work, there’s Huddle and Google Documents to track those.)

By the time that you have the right people on board, set specific goals and put it in a file where everyone can see it. If you want, you may even spend one meeting where you explain it to them and when they are free to ask questions. With that, celebrate your little successes (milestones) and always be sensitive of your communication. Maybe you are communicating too often, maybe it’s also very loose that people start developing trust issues about you/ your team. It’s not enough that people deliver, people also need to be “seen” online when needed. If you’re the boss, you must also be the most flexible part of your team.

Those are the little things that matter most to building and maintaining virtual teams. Got more questions about working virtually? You can email me via yournewprgirl@gmail.com. ♥

Lotsalove,

Your New Pr Girl