Leaders all around the world have a surprising blind spot – unhappy employees.
Most of our organisations are hard-wired to measure and value economic indicators like GDP, revenues and profits. In contrast, wellbeing and lifestyle outcomes, or employee happiness, is rarely part of the conversation.
As a result, it’s easy to overlook the value of programs, systems and resources dedicated to looking after our teams.
The issue caught our attention thanks to a new book released by Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup and StrengthsFinder fame, called Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It.
Jon’s research has concluded that global unhappiness has been on the rise for a decade – it’s not just a pandemic phenomenon.
Why? A major contributor to this increase in global unhappiness is our experience at work.
“One of the things that employers don’t watch as often is employee happiness, like whether or not they have the opportunity to do what they do best or have the materials that they need.”
The result of this omission isn’t trivial, Jon argues: “People who are miserable at work look as miserable as people without jobs,” Jon said on a podcast.
So, what’s the solution? Meet employee needs, give them the right tools to do their jobs – and critically – measure their emotional states.
Customer emotions matter, too
This thinking also applies to customer experience. How we feel about a retailer, corporate entity or charity directly influences our decision to engage or spend money.
Behavioural Economics Group argues this idea is deeply embedded into the human psyche:
“Most of our choices are not the result of careful deliberation. We live in the moment, resist change, are subject to distorted memory, and are affected by physiological and emotional states.”
No wonder corporate sales cycles can take so long!
Enter the emotional economy
Ironically, all this feeling brings us back to economics. Over the past few years, organisations have been taking notice of workplace, behavioural and technology trends. It’s given birth to a new term – the emotional economy.
First coined by futurist Richard Yonck, the emotional economy describes the way technology and emotionally intelligent devices learn from, and respond to, our behaviour and emotional states.
Yes, it has a shadow side. For example, social media famously games our emotions, serving us more content with similar positive or negative emotions.
The opportunity
The challenge for organisations of all types is to approach this dilemma with integrity, curiosity and intelligence.
That’s because the emotional economy is creating news ways of engaging an organisation’s stakeholders that leads to faster growth and sustained success. For example, new technologies are being developed to quantify and capture emotions as specific data.
This market, called affective computing, is predicted by Global Industry Analysts to be worth US$181.8 billion by 2026. Sure, we’re not all yet buying or using affective computing solutions, but it’s a sign of things to come.
In response, we encourage leaders to think carefully about the tools and methods they employ to measure, report and make decisions based on emotional indicators – for customers, clients and employees.
Here’s a quick set of questions to consider when evaluating employee happiness:
- Executive leaders: What emotions and behaviours should we measure across the team to best reflect our vision and brand?
- Marketers and creatives: What emotional drivers attract, and repel, customers?
- Social sector leaders: What long-term emotional and behaviour changes will best demonstrate our impact?
- Management teams: Is our organisation focused on wellbeing, or well-buying?
That last one’s a cheeky pun, but you get the point. To what extent are hard economic indicators driving your business, or have you sought to find a balance where emotional indicators are equally important?
It’s not a simple conversation, but the goal isn’t complicated. Leaders have an enormous opportunity to turn around the unhappiness trend, and in turn, make a big difference.
What indicators drive your business?
Contact us to talk about impact strategies, marketing programs or events that take advantage of emotional and economic indicators to succeed.