Last year, I wrote a post titled “Happy Employees are not Engaged Employees” talking about the relationship between happiness, motivation and engagement. It occurred to me after writing the post that we should talk about the opposite – unhappy employees.
Employees occasionally come to work unhappy. They might also become unhappy about a decision the company made or their manager made. The fact is, employees do have the right to be unhappy every once in a while.
Just because an employee is unhappy, it doesn’t mean they are disengaged.
The state of unhappiness might only last for a short time. If we think of classic change models, there’s always this step of frustration, anger, denial, whatever you want to call it. I like to label it the 24-hour funk. Whenever a decision occurred that we knew someone wasn’t going to be happy about, they were allowed to be in a funk about it for a day.
Then we all needed to deal with it and move on.
Many times, employees who were initially unhappy about the decision came to appreciate it. They possibly even ended up liking the decision. But change is, well, change and it takes time to process. We need to give employees time to acclimate to change. More importantly, we need to allow employees to be unhappy – express their emotions. That’s part of a healthy work relationship.
Please notice I didn’t say be mean and offensive. It is possible to be unhappy and considerate at the same time.
Where companies need to pay attention is when employees start becoming unhappy a lot. Or for long periods of time. When an employee can’t shake the 24-hour funk, something else might be happening. It’s important to get those conversations on the table.
Suppressing your employees’ natural emotions doesn’t stop unhappiness. It simply puts a mask on disengagement.
Image courtesy of HR Bartender
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Chris aka new_resource says
Disengagement is a delicate balance, the littlest thing can cause disengagement and actually the simplest gesture of kindness can increase engagement as well.
Sharlyn Lauby says
Thanks for the comment Chris. Agreed – I’d add that sometimes not giving employees their space to work things out could be one of those “little things” that contributes to the outcome.
TalentTalks says
I would agree that happiness and engagement are not necessarily directly related. And, that unhappiness is not something to be overly concerned with unless it is driven by underlying cultural problems in the work environment.
The basic concept of engagement merely reflects an employee’s level of discretionary effort toward performing their job or achieving goals. An unhappy employee is still fully capable of putting in the effort to get their work done and may never even show signs of dissatisfaction.
To me, the core relationship between performance and engagement is more tied to an employee’s source of motivation. For example a person that is intrinsically motivated will generally display consistent work-ethic regardless of engagement or being happy or unhappy about something at work. While an extrinsically motivated person is probably more susceptible to being swayed by their happy or unhappy feelings, especially if they believe there is little to be gained by going above and beyond.
Abel Pagaling says
Excellent post! I think managers tend to blame themselves when employees are unhappy.
Paul says
Thank you for this post on happiness in the workplace—or lack thereof—and its relationship to employee engagement. It’s important for employees to know that they’re appreciated. I recently wrote a blog post for my company on how to let employees know that their contributions to the workplace are welcomed and meaningful. If you’d like to check it out, I’d love to hear your thoughts: http://bit.ly/SxY4NM.
Pulasthi Wannniarachchi says
Use Cloud HR System for your company HR. Unhappy employees will happy soon.
David says
Too often, managers ignore unhappy employees. The best way to deal with it is a)give it the 24 hours suggested, then b)tackle it head on. Ask why. Ask what they would do. Ask them how to go about it. Then, involve them in that process. Not only will it turn the frown, but it will re-engage the unhappy one.
Sharlyn Lauby says
Thanks for the comments and sharing resources! I think Abel’s comment was on target. Managers often take responsibility for (and are held accountable for) an employee’s happiness when it’s something they don’t always have control over.