When your employees aren’t happy at work, you are in serious problems. Not only is it less likely that they will work at full capacity, but you may find that your business suffers from reputational harm as a result. Also, you are more likely to have a high turnover of staff, which can mean hours of lost time in training. However, before you start panicking, you need to work out how your employees are feeling. So, here are a few signs that they are unhappy.
Minimal New Ideas or Feedback
Happy employees are usually willing to contribute new ideas in meetings and will provide feedback on projects. If you find that your employees are behaving in a lethargic way and they just seem to want to do the bare minimum to get by, this is a sign that all is not well in the workplace. Satisfied and engaged employees should also care about the success of the business and will want to see it continually moving in the right direction.
Watching the Clock
This is one you have to be careful about because even satisfied employees look forward to finishing at the end of the day. At the same time, if your employees seem to be counting down the seconds and are out the door as soon as it ticks to five o’clock, there may be a more serious problem afoot. Obvious boredom and disengagement can be challenging to spot, but it is worth taking the time to pick up on this problem.
Lack of Engagement
If your employees seem to have put a brick wall around themselves and they are not willing to engage with their tasks and the business as a whole, this is another serious cause for concern. Of course, measuring employee engagement can be tough, but there is software that can help you out with this task. You also want your team to be connecting with one another on a personal and professional level. If everyone is closed off in their own little world, this can end up becoming an issue.
Visual Clues
Obviously, not everyone is an expert in behavioral science, so picking up on negative visual clues can be tough, but there are plenty of obvious signifiers such as restlessness. Perhaps your employees always seem to have a faraway gaze as if they were imagining themselves elsewhere. You don’t want to make it seem like you are spying on your employees but having even a cursory understanding of body language can be useful.
If you suspect that your employees aren’t happy, now is the time to do something about it. Not only will this help to benefit your business culture, but you will find that you have a more hardworking and engaged team. Ideally, you will pick up on this issue early to stop it from becoming a more systemic problem that is harder to tackle. Otherwise, you may find that your business suffers as a consequence.