The question of all questions for HR departments everywhere: how do I know if our employees are happy at work? The honest answer is, as always, to use several different ways to determine the happiness level of your workforce.

Most HR professionals know that when it comes to people matters, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, there's a lot of fine-tuning, adapting best practices to fit your company and its structure, and trying our innovative techniques.

So, in this article, we're bringing you five ways to recognize positive attitudes and happy employees in your workforce, whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 company:

Taking the pulse of your team

The first step towards knowing if your team members are happy is, well, to ask them out front. If you don't have a regular and consistent process of gathering feedback from employees, now is a great time to start.

You can use many methods to cover all the essential topics: work environment, personal productivity and performance, work-related ideas and suggestions, and overall job satisfaction. Here are some initiatives you may want to introduce:

• One-on-one check-ins for employees and their managers
• Employee surveys about the work environment and employee experience
• All-hands meetings for suggestions and new ideas

The critical things about getting employee feedback are transparency and willingness to act upon the results. Employees must feel empowered and encouraged to speak about their feelings, give constructive feedback, and suggest improvements. And when their feedback arrives at its destination, the management should respond and implement changes that will improve employee happiness.

Looking for signs of burnout

When conducting surveys and check-ins, make sure to look for the signs of burnout among your employees, especially remote ones. The past two years haven't been easy on workers globally, and estimates are that around half of them suffered from burnout during 2020.

Burnout is one of the driving forces behind high employee turnover rates, so do your best to identify signs of burnout and its causes and work on preventing it from affecting your people and your bottom line.

Measuring productivity

In hybrid and remote companies, managers are juggling employee satisfaction, productivity, and performance of distributed workforces. Keeping tabs on the experiences and feelings of employees across 20 different states or even countries can be daunting and complex.

Introducing a measuring and monitoring system that helps managers see how employees feel when they come into their workspaces can inform decision-making and help companies gain visibility. At Gable, we've developed a dashboard just like this that allows People Operations managers to see and analyze the productivity and satisfaction of employees in all locations.

Analyzing employee engagement

Another way to observe the overall happiness of your employees is to watch their disengagement closely. Some studies show that only 36% of American employees are engaged at work, and unhappy employees are often unengaged. On the other hand, satisfied employees are more productive, work better, and their good work positively impacts the company's overall business results.

If you want to know whether your employees are engaged, tie this topic into your feedback collection efforts. Introduce NPS surveys, engagement surveys, and HR chatbots, organize non-business meetings to discuss company culture and values, and conduct onboarding and offboarding interviews to learn about employee perspectives.

Monitoring your employee retention rate

With The Gret Resignation well underway and millions of employees in the US quitting their jobs in search of something better, it's no wonder most HR and People departments make employee retention a priority.

Employee retention is a reliable indicator of happiness inside a company. If the work environment is inadequate, there is no work-life balance, benefits are scarce, and flexible work is not an option, most employees will look for an employer with better work culture.

Analyze the ratio of newly hired vs. employees leaving, determine the average time an employee stays at your company - and adjust your strategy accordingly. With this data, you'll know which steps to take to improve retention and happiness, whether that's offering flexible work or creating more trajectories for career growth.

Introducing wellbeing programs

Creating employee wellbeing programs can sound like an easy fix to a complex solution, but it doesn't have to be. After you get initial assumptions on issues within your company, you can start addressing some of them through wellbeing programs.

With time, you'll be able to analyze which benefits garner the most interest from employees, track the ROI of wellness programs, and compare the before and after data to see if the incentives made a difference. Investing in wellbeing is an excellent example of using company resources and budgets to increase positivity, teamwork, and overall workplace satisfaction.

Bonus tip: Organizing in-person events

The most significant challenge remote employees face is connecting with their coworkers, and that’s where in-person encounters can play a big role. From startups to corporations, everyone loves getting together and celebrating the results of their hard work.

For People managers, it’s never been easier to engage employees with different in person offerings like offsite gatherings, team building activities, company celebrations, or even just team meetings a few times a week.