CAIRO - 18 September 2019: We are past the era where we can think that a high salary, large bonuses and frequent raises are incentives to make an employee join or stick with a company. It does play a factor, but money isn’t the silver bullet anymore, happiness is.

Employees today have choices—lots of them. According to the Staples Annual Workplace Survey, 80% of workers believe that employers have a responsibility to keep employees mentally and physically well. The simple lesson: If you want to keep the best and the brightest, create a happy work environment.

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The Science Behind Happiness At Work

Evidence from psychology, leadership and management studies, and even neuroscience supports that not only is it possible to find happiness at work, but that doing so is unambiguously good. Happier employees do better on all fronts, from day-to-day health to productivity to career advancement, and this consistently perks up the bottom line for the organization as a whole.

According to Gallup’s recent State of the Global Workplace report, 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work, they see work as something to be endured, not enjoyed! The cost of unhappy or disengaged staff can be far-reaching and Gallup has identified 8 areas that this marvel can affect: Customer Loyalty/Engagement – Profitability – Productivity - Staff Turnover - Safety Incidents – Wastage – Absenteeism – Quality. According to Caleb Papineau, an author of the blog Tinypulse; lost productivity among workers cost around $1 trillion globally each year, which is a shocking revelation for the world economy.

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The Link Between Happiness and Productivity

As stated by Delivering Happiness, the world’s leading Culture coaching and consulting company that was behind the Dubai Happiness initiative, a happy workplace contributes to the business’ success, it increases the productivity by 21%, align your team and increase retention by 41%, and also it grows sales by 37%!

In light of these findings, companies such as Google started to invest more in employee support, and employee satisfaction has risen as a result. For Google, it rose by 37%.

As a result, employees started to look for job opportunities that can also provide happiness in the workplace, and in an effort to help them, recruiting website CareerBliss recently released its annual list of the 50 happiest companies in America. The list includes well-known companies such as American Express, Apple, Microsoft and Nike, as well as other large and mid-size companies.


Mountain View’s offices in New Cairo was a design collaboration with Delivering Happiness and CallisonRTKL

In Egypt, there is unfortunately little work on the importance of happiness as an input to economic processes or measures such as productivity.

One of the earliest Egyptian companies to tackle this notion was Mountain View, the real estate developers, who partnered with Delivering Happiness to establish their culture transformation program. On September 22, 2019, they, along with Delivering Happiness and CallisonRTKL, are also sponsoring the first conference of its kind in Egypt and the Middle East that will address the “Happiness at Work” phenomenon, shedding light on using the Science of Design and Happiness in creating office spaces.

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Tips For Your Company To Achieve Happiness For Its Employees

Elevating the happiness of your team is not an easy task, but it is one that is worth you venturing in to raise the productivity of your business. We’ve laid out the top tips for making your workplace a happy one:

Deliver Praise and Recognition Often
Feeling underappreciated at work is the #1 reason employees leave their jobs? Number one! Beating out low salary, limited vacation days and not enough flexibility for life outside of work.

Make Work/Life Balance a Priority
Team members need to have a clear understanding that you value them as a loyal employee and as a person who has a life outside of work that is just as important.

Hire Happy Personalities
Hire people who can bring laughter to the workplace and will improve productivity and motivation for the whole office as that happy, optimistic outlook is contagious.

Refrain from Micromanaging
Employees who feel trusted and supported, without being hovered over, are statistically more relaxed and confident in the job they do.

Launch an Individual Development Plan
You can use an IDP to develop a better understanding of your team’s professional and personal goals including their strengths and areas they want to improve on.

Let’s spread the happiness, and bear its fruit.

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