Happiness: Why it should be a priority in every workplacePosted 7 months ago by Amy Taylor

On average we spend around 36.4 hours per week working… and roughly 3,500 days in our lifetime!

So, it’s no wonder why happiness in the workplace is a topic that comes up again and again. After all, why would you want to spend hours of your day in an environment that’s getting you down?

Happy employees often mean productive and loyal employees who are more engaged. Most people just want to be part of a friendly, supportive, and inclusive environment where they can do meaningful work and have the opportunity to grow and succeed.

No one wants to be part of a toxic culture or feel like they aren’t progressing in their career so it’s important that companies boost employee morale and make the workplace an environment where people can produce their best work.

There are many factors that contribute to happiness at work, from a strong culture that encourages social events and wellbeing initiatives to fantastic benefits like flexible hours, free lunches, or an unlimited holiday policy.

And we can’t forget one of the most popular benefits in recent years – work from home flexibility. Unsurprisingly work from home and remote working has become one of the most sought-after benefits for job seekers in the UK, and it has been found to increase employee happiness by 20% (Tracking Happiness, 2023).

Every quarter at Client Server we have been focussing on a wellbeing topic as part of our mental health initiative and if you didn’t already guess, for this quarter we picked Happiness.

We wanted to understand what factors contribute most to people’s happiness in the workplace…. and what better way to find out than to ask our very own team!

We gathered responses from just over 40 of our employees across all levels of the business.

The results weren’t a huge surprise but demonstrated further the importance of a strong company culture with ‘The people you work with’ coming out top, followed closely by ‘Social events & activities’ and ‘Career progression & learning opportunities’.

What some of our employees said makes them happiest at work...

“Being with friendly and collaborative people”

“When the culture is good everyone is on top form – social events as a team and company are great”

“Having a good team to work with!”

“A positive environment with a balance of hard work and enjoying the job in terms of socials”

“Feeling valued, responsible, and appreciated!”

“Opportunity for career progression and personal development”

“Having a good office culture that creates a successful and fun environment”

We also asked how important workplace happiness was to them with 90% responding ‘Very Important’ and finally whether they thought that workplace happiness contributed to their productivity & performance to which 100% agreed ‘Yes’.

This highlights just how much of an impact employee happiness has on a company’s success. Content employees are found to be much more productive and more driven to work and to help their company succeed. They are also more likely to go the extra mile for their employer and contribute in ways beyond their usual responsibilities as they find their work more meaningful.

And obviously with happier employees comes lower rates of turnover and higher rates of employee loyalty and retention – so it is impossible to overplay just how important workplace happiness is!

At Client Server we take the happiness of our employees seriously and we are always thinking of ways to keep everyone smiling.

We know that by having a happy team we have better relationships with each other, we collaborate and support each other more, we are more productive and creative, and we are more engaged and focussed on company goals.

That’s why we’ve dedicated this week to celebrating Happiness in the Workplace, and we have a bunch of treats in store for our team including in-house massages, guess the crisp challenge (a Client Server favourite), and a CS style pub quiz with pizzas… and we have plenty more plans in the pipeline for the rest of the year!

If you’d like to come and join the fun, we’d love to hear from you – get in touch with someone on our internal team today.