When happiness becomes a corporate KPI

I had a very interesting exchange with a client of mine today (a manager of a major international company we all know).

She was talking about a new HR initiative recently introduced in the office and based on one of these numerous mobile apps measuring employee’s mood and engagement.

In case you haven’t heard about these apps, just imagine a very simple user interface where you report, daily, your mood & level of engagement by clicking on smiley faces, clouds, stars, hearts, etc… and feedback your company in real time.

And, in the end, the company has an accurate measurement of the internal engagement level.

Voilà, so smart!

However, my client was frustrated.

Oh, she wasn’t really complaining about the app, she was more frustrated about how this initiative was just used as a marketing strategy, a facade (her words), and how it didn’t change anything in the office.

According to her, nobody was fooled, this initiative was more about ticking boxes and to appear like doing something about it.

But not to actually do the right thing.

See, the figures had to be monitored by the managers of the teams. If the results were not satisfactory, the managers had to create an action plan and to make sure to improve the stats, knowing, of course, they didn’t have any extra resources, training or funds.

Just like any other business KPI, the managers had now one more to deal with (like they didn’t have enough already), and, obviously, the pressure to meet the “correct number”.

That’s why my client was frustrated. It wasn’t really about engagement, happiness or well-being at work. No, it was really about the number.

And how weird to be annoyed and stressed because of happiness?

Believe me, it is great to see employer branding, employee engagement & experience, wellness & happiness at work becoming key strategical objectives in organizations. It is about time!

And we hear it constantly: in this new era of disruption and complexity, a company requires not only great tech, but also ideas, talents, rapport, energy, passion, engagement, vision, teamwork, collaboration, aliveness…

Companies must be productive but also inventive, agile and resourceful. They need not only great technologies but also the full human potential.

But the real paradox is to see how these topics are handled in certain companies, like if they could be reduced in a spreadsheet and be solved by a click of a button.

The truth is, we want to “solve” something intangible, invisible and -so- human like we were running a project on a car or a building.

Agreed, we need an environment where it is safe for us to express our emotions, and it is great to have mobile apps for that.

But if companies don’t want to go deeper and to look courageously at intangible elements such as culture, leadership, relations, trust, empathy…nothing will change.

If companies are not willing to acknowledge that the complexity of engagement demands to go beyond the “easy & safe” quick fixes…nothing will change.

If companies implement well-being for the wrong reason (i.e. only to make employees more productive)…nothing will change.

If companies are only interested in meeting a KPI…well, nothing will change.

Worse, the pressure will get higher, and the risk is to become stressed & burnout because we don’t reach the right amount of happiness.

How ironic!

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