Why Workers' Happiness Matters

When the pandemic forced most workers around the world to work remotely, many unexpected situations arose. Mothers who returned home had to divide their attention between work and children, workers with large families had to share small spaces with others to work and people living alone had to abandon their social lives to stay home. In the midst of this scenario, a business model has flourished that has been used to measure people's happiness for years. 

One example is PeopleStrong, an Indian HR startup that specializes in advising and guiding companies to measure employee happiness through surveys and meetings with senior executives and interactive chatbots to then setting up strategies to help employees that are struggling. An Oxford research found that workers are 13 percent more productive when they are happy.

‘We found that when workers are happier, they work faster by making more calls per hour worked and, importantly, convert more calls to sales,’ said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, from the University of Oxford.

This has led some companies to cultivate healthier relationships with their employees and take an interest in their personal concerns. Technology plays a key role, Prakash Rao, Chief Experience Officer at PeopleStrong, told the BBC. “Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools like chatbots can identify patterns and trends of employee behavior and push managers and HR to initiate conversations,” he pointed out.

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• Energy companies’ offshore personnel is 28 days on board and 28 days off. In those 28 days on board, crew members work 12 hours per day, seven days a week. As information about the COVID-19 pandemic is unclear and different per country, rules for offshore personnel were even stricter. Guido van der Zwet, General Manager of IPS Powerful People, writes for MBN about the situations the company has encountered and its solutions.

• Is there a female disadvantage in the Mexican economic reactivation? On Oct. 5, President López Obrador and the private initiative announced an initiative to invest in 39 infrastructure projects to reactivate the national economy. The areas chosen to develop these projects were communications, energy, water, environment and transportation. Participation will not be equal for everyone in these projects, however, as not even 25 percent of the female population will take part in this project initiative.