Are you happy to make a change?

You’ve probably read or heard about David Cameron’s happiness indicator which hit the newspapers back in March 2011. The Prime Minister had engaged the Office of National Statistics to draw up an official index of the nation’s happiness. The ONS has come up with a list of questions that it will use to measure whether people are happy or not, such as whether they have good relationships, health, friends and – significantly – job satisfaction.

Mr Cameron has now taken this one step further and plans to make ministers use the happiness of the nation as a yardstick before deciding whether or not a new policy should be implemented. (Don’t mention NotW…)

Proposed policies are already measured in various terms, such as how they impact on the environment, the economy and gender. Now ministers will also need to assess the impact of their proposals on people’s happiness. (Best leave MPs expenses out too I guess…)

Whether this will actually work in practice has yet to be seen. For example, we can fairly confidently presume that a new policy to increase any taxes will have an adverse affect on happiness; bringing in an extra Bank Holiday will probably, on balance, please most people.

However, the idea of measuring happiness is a good one – but, in the world of business, it’s not new. We call it ‘job satisfaction’. Most far-sighted bosses will look to see what affect any changes have on their staff’s job satisfaction before they are introduced.

Changes of any sort have an impact – sometimes negative, sometimes positive – on those who are affected. For example, introducing a new product is likely to please customers but it may have an adverse affect on the mood of staff, who may have to work harder.

Changes have to happen for an organisation to move forward but it is the way change is managed which holds the key to success or failure. By careful management, even the most unpopular changes can have a minimal impact on the happiness of staff. By ensuring you bring 49% or more of your people with you on that journey you are far more likely to get to the far side of the change curve rather than just drive people around the bend…

If you would like some advice on how to bring change to your business with minimum disruption to both the productivity and happiness of your staff, please get in touch.