PEOPLE | CULTURE
I
t has taken a pandemic and an ongoing costof-living crisis for countless companies to finally realise the importance of looking after their people .
COVID-19 , in conjunction with the stay-athome orders that followed , provided many employees with the impetus to make longoverdue decisions about the direction of their careers , triggering a trend which became widely known as the Great Resignation .
Feelings of discontent were then amplified as spiralling inflation and general economic uncertainty began to eat into pay packets , prompting workers to ask whether it was time to seek pastures new .
All this means senior executives , managers and HR teams face a monumental challenge to keep their people happy which , according to numerous studies , is a key ingredient when it comes to boosting productivity and adding to the bottom line .
Back in 2019 , researchers from the University of Oxford studied BT call centre workers over a period of six months to gauge the impact of happiness on productivity – and their findings were pretty convincing . Happy workers not only made more calls , but also achieved 13 % more sales than their unhappy colleagues , without putting in any extra hours .
Similarly , the University of Warwick ’ s Department of Economics concluded last year that happiness made people around 12 % more productive . businesschief . eu 59