The real asset of most organisations is its people. This article explores how promoting self-awareness and self-understanding could transform organisations by helping staff manage their own emotions and mental health, have happier relationships, make better decisions, improve their emotional intelligence and their soft skills.

Introduction:

Organisations are looking for ways to support their staff and boost their productivity at the same time. They face many challenges:

• According to the US Surgeon General 76% of staff have a mental health condition.
• Gallup estimates that 67% of staff are not engaged at work, and this costs companies $7.8 trillion/year.
• 75% of employers say employees lack soft skills (shrm)
• 50% of new managers fail within 2 years (Forbes)

Supporting staff to understand themselves and how their minds work can help address all these challenges, help them be happier and mentally healthy and boost productivity at the same time. This understanding is simple but the impact can be significant.
This is how.

#1 Mental health

Stress is just an automatic reaction from our thinking and the difference between how things are and how we want things to be. Understanding our own mind can help us be in charge of our own reactions. To be less stressed we can either accept things as they are, change the way we react, or change the situation. This can put us in charge of managing our own stress. Similarly a deeper understanding of anxiety and depression can help us manage them better. Self-understanding can also help us deal with challenges with a calm intelligence and prevent problems arising in the first place.

Explore these modules in the HappierMe app: Stress, Anxiety, Depression.

#2 Healthy relationships

Interpersonal conflict is as common in organisations as it is outside them. This encourages tribalism, impacts collaboration, leads to poor decisions and derails productivity. In one study 80% of employees said they experienced relationship conflict. A deeper understanding of our own mind can help us understand others better, and not let our ego get in the way of collaborating with others, for the shared objectives of the organisation we work for.

Happier relationships at home can also translate into happier employees at work.

Explore these modules in the HappierMe app: Relationships, Emotional Needs, Understanding our own ego

#3 A positive attitude

Attitude is everything. By default, our mind tends to look at things negatively, always finding something to criticise or grumble about. If we can notice this in ourselves and change that, we can find the good in everything we do, and every person we meet. This attitude is infectious and can make people, and organisations flourish. It begins with self-awareness and realising that a negative attitude does not serve us.

Explore these modules in the HappierMe app: Guided questions

#4 Happier staff

Happiness is infectious and boosts engagement, retention and productivity.

We rely on external pleasures to make us happy - our relationships, buying things, holidays, recognition, and our work. There is nothing wrong with that but the mind that relies on chasing external pleasures for its happiness is likely to be unhappy. This is because we may not get what we want, or the pleasure we find fades and we feel bored again and need something new. Self-awareness helps us realise that happiness is an inside job, and comes from appreciating and seeing freshly what we already have, having a positive attitude, being grateful, being mindful in the now, and doing our tasks with care and attention.

We can then bring our happiness to work and rely less on work to make us happy.

Explore these modules in the HappierMe app: Happiness

#5 Enlightened leadership

Enlightened managers make the biggest difference to staff happiness, productivity and retention. To get the best out of people you manage requires self-awareness, emotional intelligence, the ability to communicate with care, offer critical feedback with intelligence, be resilient when things don’t go to plan, offer encouragement at the right time and learn what makes people tick.

The app offers resources for all of this, but the foundation is a deeper self-understanding.

Enlightened leaders are ineffective without an equally enlightened workforce and the HappierMe app offers the possibility of deepening the emotional intelligence, communication and leadership skills of everyone in the organisation.

Explore these modules in the HappierMe app: Leadership, Communication, Criticism, Making Better Decisions

#6 Emotional intelligence

Our ability to understand and manage our emotions is crucial for our mental health and to have healthy relationships, but it is a skill that is not taught anywhere. Understanding our own mind can help us be in charge of our own emotions and be able to respond with intelligence when we are triggered. It also helps us to understand others better. Most studies suggest emotional intelligence is a significant contributor to our success at work, much more than our knowledge or skills.

Explore these modules in the HappierMe app: Manage your emotions

To find out more please email: team@happierme.app

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