Do we need Chief Happiness Officers ( CHO)s beyond the pandemic?
The advent of new nomenclatures in the C-suite alongside the crucial need to create happier workplaces — reflects on today’s 4k+ LinkedIn profile titles listings (as of Mar 27, 2022).
A closer look: Few thought-provoking statistics:
- United Nations’ world happiness report reveals every year the ranking for all 146 countries in the world. (2022 details here)
- During the pandemic, there is a surge in Happiness coach certifications and Certified Happiness Officer accreditations. A few popular offerings are from Wohoo Inc, Happiness Business school, ICF, and Happiitude.
- 72% of Companies are striving to create more engaging happier co-spaces.
Happiness at the workplace sounds like an HR function:
CHOs role is synonymous with the HR/business partner focusing on employee benefits and people matters as a whole division. However, there is a greater need in this millennial workforce to treat employees at an individual level (rather just team/group level).
Some of the techniques such as the PERMA model, Atlas of Emotions, different zones of happiness, and various tools such as HeartCount, Celpax to measure and evaluate metrics.
CHOs are primarily intended to be capable of fostering happiness, loyalty. They in turn pledge to build the right culture and make productive employees by the delivery of happiness to the office.
Therefore, giants such as Google, Amazon to SAP have implemented a separate function to holistically bring in — psychological safety — keeping every soul from top to bottom “ SAFE and VALUED “.
(on the left) — Illustration of the employee expectations from the employer in the higher millennial workforce.
At Individual Level: If you want to become a CHO, you are expected to hone skills in psychology, HR, and people relations, coaching and implementing creative ways of harnessing employer-employee relations.
At Organizational Level: If you lack employee well-being and score low on happiness factors, appointing a dedicated CHO might be an efficient way. The saying goes — “Happiest employees are more productive, thus leading the firm to higher profits”.
To sum up, it all depends on what the current organizational state of HR and well-being goals are — to appoint a separate function as Chief Happiness Officer — which in few companies are inter-related in their policies and processes in the pyramid hierarchy.
Does your organization have a CHO? If so, please let us know their influence on employee well-being.
We’d love to read your comments
Do you think it is essential to hire CHOs in the corporates?
Thanks for reading!
PS: This blog has been contributed by our TGV Crew member Durga Krishnamoorthy
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
