Without employees, you don’t have a business. Because they are tremendously important, there is great value associated with keeping your employees happy. When it comes to you as a business owner, your success is greatly influenced by your employees’ satisfaction.

Why and How?

There are many reasons happy employees are important to your business. These reasons will be further explored in this post but, for starters, happy employees create a positive work environment for you and everyone else. There is also a direct relationship between happy employees and happy customers. A happy employee takes steps to ensure your customers are satisfied. This approach in turn leads to a higher level of customer retention and helps attract new customers. On the flip side, unhappy employees can be quite dangerous to your company’s bottom line, driving business away.

How do you get happy employees? The easiest way is to look for them. The hiring process is a key process for your business’ health and should never be overlooked or trivialized. Having happy employees begins at this point. Who you hire can make, or break, your business.

Generating Employee Satisfaction

After you have hired staff, there is much you can do to generate job satisfaction. Offering great pay and benefits is only one important factor in keeping employees happy. More overlooked, but equally vital, is appreciating the contributions employees make. If employees feel as though they are being overlooked or not appreciated, their overall happiness level will falter.

Another recommendation is to motivate employees and offer incentives. Many business owners unnaturally expect their employees to have the same dedication to the business that they do, and this can lead to problems. Your employees realize they don’t own the business. As a result, most are only willing to invest so much of themselves, their talents, and their abilities into your business. Taking steps to keep your employees invested, such as showcasing their talents, being generous with praise, and offering bonuses for jobs well done will help keep them happy. Additionally vital to creating a positive business environment is to ensure you dismiss employees who are consistently negative or fail to perform their duties.

Being a positive owner—a happiness role model—is a huge step in the right direction where cultivating employee satisfaction is concerned. Special touches, such as giving employees their birthdays off, can also go a long way towards creating the kind of climate that leads to increased employee satisfaction—which, ultimately, promises to increase your bottom line.

Happiness-Productivity Link

Research has revealed feeling happy on the job makes employees more productive. A British study, cited by Fortune Magazine, concluded that keeping employees happy increased their productivity by up to 20%.

If employee satisfaction leads to customer satisfaction, increased productivity, and greater profits, it is apparent that keeping employees happy today will benefit you when it comes time to sell your business. Prospective buyers are interested in your level of profits, as they affect business value. Thus, the investment you make in your employees’ happiness today can result in multiple future benefits.