A reward idea to boost happiness and productivity.

A pursuit of happiness at work

Most employers dream of having an employee who is happy, loyal, productive, consistent, and creative to achieve the organisation's success, and gain profits. Amidst the threat of high turnover, demotivation, and a wave of resignation, many organisations try to retain the best candidates by providing numerous facilities and rewards, ensuring they are happy enough to stay at work. Enabling a happy employee in a happy workplace is useful to improve company performance as it improves employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity. Research by Oxford University found that employees are more productive and work faster when they feel ecstatic. The research also shows that happy workers are productive within office hours, and less likely to do overtime. A study by Gallup also found that there is a connection between happiness in work and its workplace and employee engagement success. Meanwhile, employees could be disloyal when their work and workplace needs are unmet. Both research show that employees' enthusiasm in work affects productivity and engagement positively which will be beneficial to the employers.

There are various approaches to making employees happy at work:

1. Flexible working arrangements to achieve work-life balance. This method might help them feel comfortable at work, providing a new working sphere, and making them reconsider taking extended breaks and vacation leave. The 2023 International Labor Organization report showcased a strong connection between flexibility to productivity and improved work-life balance.
2. A transparent mechanism to gain trust with open-door policies ensuring employees are up-to-date with the latest internal and external communication and laws, embracing feedback to make employees feel involved, and perspicuous decision-making to make employees work in the right direction with clear communication.
3. Maintaining employee’s well-being and mental health. Promoting wellness helps prevent stress and provides employees with the tools to perform at their best. This method can be done through onsite medical and telehealth services, mental health counseling services, various fitness programs, healthy diet lunches, or snacks for employees that could be beneficial for physical and mental health. A positive company culture and a peaceful environment are also crucial to enhancing wellness by acknowledging accomplishments, giving compliments, and simply being nice to each other.
4. A competitive financial reward to employees to boost their happiness and productivity at work. Financial stimulation to employees could help them improve their job security and peace of mind. Amidst the global crisis and inflation, financial rewards (money or shopping vouchers and discounts) are significant to purchase anything primary to life like groceries and households.

A strong connection between reward, happiness, and productivity.

Another research shows that happy employees are likely to be more productive. Happy employee is linked positively to organisation retention rates, culture, and overall success because they feel honored and want to work hard and gain pride in the work, giving positive influences to other colleagues. All of these best practices and theoretical background sums a loop between employee happiness, productivity rate, and reward to retain its happiness.

The reward idea

The writer thinks that it is also significant to improve the government's productivity by making the civil servants happy. One of the ways to achieve civil servant happiness is by offering them an interesting reward package. For example, it can be done through public and private partnerships (PPP) programs, where there will be a collaboration between the government and privates (i.e. local SMEs and transportation providers). This reward program is intended for high-performance civil servants to make them happy, feel motivated, consistent at work, and be more productive after getting a prize such as a special discount or free vouchers to purchase groceries, households, food stalls, and local or online transportation vouchers, which are basic needs in their daily life. With reward motivation, civil servants will race and compete to prove themselves to be better and achieve high performance. When they achieve high performance, it will automatically help boost organisational productivity and help the institution serve the people better, quicker, and more effectively.

On the other hand, this program not only works to make civil servants happy but also to improve the local economy by purchasing rewards from the people/small businesses/local transportation operators. It will give a trickle-down effect, not only helping the organisation to improve productivity and serve better, but also helping small businesses to grow, offering more job vacancies to people, and improving the people's life quality. Therefore, this program will potentially be beneficial to the high-performance civil servants, the government office, the people who receive the service, and the SMEs/small businesses/local and online transportation providers.