Foster your staff’s self-fulfillment

The rise in Chief Happiness Officer (CHO) appointments, in charge of ensuring the well-being of the staff and of improving conviviality, is only the tip of a new concern in organizations: how can we help staff members find fulfillment in their work?

Indeed, it is nowadays a well-known fact that staff who are happy at work perform better and show more loyalty to their employer. Conversely, the increasing disengagement observed in some organizations relates to a loss in meaning and to the perception of a lack of acknowledgement on a day-to-day basis. Yet, if the CHO can create an environment that promotes well-being, the role of the direct line manager also seems critical: several polls by the Gallup institute show that one in every two staff members resigns because of his/her manager. The challenge of work fulfillment is thus really at the heart of management.

Of course, the role of managers is not to make their staff happy—the pursuit of happiness is foremost a personal endeavor; the essential role of managers is to mobilize their teams to make them perform better. Yet, to achieve this, helping the staff to reach fulfillment at work—and even thanks to their work—is a powerful lever. Indeed, staff members who feel good about themselves are also more creative, more involved, more innovative, more invested—and thus more performant.

This entails addressing three major challenges:

– How can you enable the expression of everyone’s uniqueness while guaranteeing the performance of a coordinated and efficient collective?

– How can you take advantage of each person’s creative and exploratory capabilities while ensuring the coherence of operations?

–  How can you help each staff member give meaning to his/her actions, in increasingly sprawling organizations?