Guest post One fun day - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Guest post One fun day - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Im currently working to finish the first draft of my second book. In the mean time, please enjoy this guest post by Karl Staib. One free paid day Small companies are best positioned to offer the one free paid fun day perk. Lets say you have ten employees and they receive three weeks off a year and they make an average of $45,000. You can add an extra day off and spending cash of $50 to each employee. This is a minimal investment of time-off and money for the amount of return received. This investment will pay dividends because your company is willing to do more than the minimum to make its employees happy. When you give back to your employees they will give back to you. Its what humans do. Smile at to someone and see if they can resist smiling back at you. They usually cant because they understand the social cues that make a successful society. The society that your company creates will determine the quality of work your company will get out of the staff. Lets break down the numbers to see how realistic it is to implement the one free paid fun day perk. Time-off If you do give your employees one extra day off each year youll be adding 4.76% to their percentage of time off given, if they receive three weeks a year. Lets say they average 250 working days a year; the company is giving up 0.40% of a working year. Thats less than half of 1%. Its not a lot of time if you look at it over the whole year. Pay If you pay them $50 to go and have fun for that day you are only increasing their pay by 10% of 1%. It would only be 0.11% if they averaged a $45,000 salary in a year. Thats not much when viewed at from a whole years wages. Overall The big picture is most important. What will happen if your company gives a one free paid fun day? Your employees will tell their families and friends and they will probably inquire if there are any openings. Everyone likes working at a place where other people also want to work. There is a reason why good companies keep bringing in quality talent. They make sure that the employees friends know about the great perks of the company. If 60% of new hires are referrals, it means most of the hiring comes from friends and co-worker suggestions and this happens because the company is making sure that the work environment stays enjoyable. Happy employees, as we all know, perform better. Giving a perk that doesnt require much money or effort can separate you from the rest of your competition. Every company wants their good reputation to spread throughout the industry through word of mouth. Heres the Kicker Each employee must give you a short report, no more than 300 words, about what they did. This is so you can learn more about your employees and what makes them happy. If they took their kids to the local amusement park then you may be able to raffle off free tickets at the company Christmas party. If they volunteered at the local recycling center then you may want to send out a survey to implement more green tactics. You may also want to put them in charge of saving the environment and the company money by conserving and recycling. People want to work for a company that they feel has good values; they want to feel proud to tell people about where they work. I would imagine that not many people are proud to work for Phillip Morris, not because its a bad work environment, but because of the damage that cigarettes do to peoples lives. Employees at Google wear their Google gear with pride. Friends are always asking them what its like to work there and if they can get them a job. Google works hard at work happiness because they understand the long-term effects that it has on the companys bottom line. Its up to your company to figure out a plan that will have your employees telling their friends about the great company that they work at. You should start small. Implementing a one free paid fun day is a great way to learn more about the staff and separate yourself from the competition. Do you think your company would ever implement a one free paid fun day? Karl Staib writes about unlocking and kicking open the door to working happy at his own blog Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this article, you may like to subscribe to his feed or read one of his most popular articles, The Five Most Important Things You Need to Know About Working Happy and 7 Tips to Process Your Stress Faster. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related