Keep Employees Happy; Put morale and engagement in the job description
What if employee morale and employee engagement were part of every job description. What if in addition to words like analyze, prepare, oversee, monitor, collaborate, and review we saw words like build morale, institute fun, and engage coworkers throughout the organization? What if a key role of every job description was to keep employees happy? What would that look like?
Clearly there would not be a spreadsheet or a piece of software that could do that? Clearly to keep employees happy we would need to spend less time analyzing and more time keeping people happy. We would need to stop preparing for building morale and actually start doing some morale building. We would not need to monitor and review morale. Smiles, low absenteeism, people showing up to work on time, and low turnover would be as clear as day. You would not need a task force if every employee knew it was his or her responsibility from day one.
What would it look like if everyone’s job included keeping employees happy?
Might we have to start providing interesting workloads? Might we need to make their work, dare I say it, Fun? Might we have to be open and honest in our communication? Might we have to not only listen to people’s ideas, but actually implement some of them? Might we allow people’s creativity to be expressed in their work; even if their work is mortgage appraisals or accounting or something else deemed drab, boring or dull? Might we need to offer a regular “Recess” of sorts to get people engaged; an opportunity for professional development? What would it take to keep employees happy?
Remember, our mantra for 2010 is Every Employee Happy. Every Day. Every Employee Engaged. Every Day. If it was part of your job to make sure your coworkers were happy, what would you do?
Now go do it. You don’t need a job description to tell you how or why to do a good thing.
