Internal Communications: What is the Purpose of a Happiness Committee?

As businesses reopen, previous internal communication methods might not be appropriate. The economic recovery requires your attention, but it is important to keep your best allies – your employees – motivated and engaged.

At CASACOM, we set up a Happiness Committee a few years ago and we have found it particularly useful during the pandemic. What is the purpose of a Happiness Committee? Here are the main takeaways.

A Clear Mission

A Happiness Committee goes beyond the traditional social committee and aims to evaluate, plan, and implement initiatives that will help your employees be more motivated and more productive. The members of the Happiness Committee work closely with management, human resources, and communication departments to ensure coherence in the approach and in the selection of activities. Management also participates in the committee’s discussions. Transparency, openness, and kindness are always on the agenda!

The committee is composed of select employees who check in with the team, submit ideas, and put them into action to maintain a healthy corporate culture. Since your employees are not a standardized mass, your committee members play a key role in communicating effectively with all team members.

How Can You Identify and Activate the Members of Your Committee?

• Reflect on which employees are the most engaged, sensitive, and intrapreneurial at heart.
• Involve them in the amplification of your internal communication strategy.
• Give them a mission that respects their identity before asking them to endorse some of your messages.
• Evaluate their engagement and collect their feedback regularly.
• Eventually, your committee will become strong ambassadors and will be able to help you identify new ones.

Your Culture: A Crucial Asset to Work On

An HRReporter survey indicates that 77% of employees believe that their corporate culture will be changed forever by COVID-19. It is now clear that the pandemic will permanently change the way we work. The impact of these physical and structural changes on corporate culture will be felt in the short and long term. Here are a few guidelines to preserve and solidify your culture:

• Write down the main elements of your culture and share them with your employees.
• Work as a team: identify the elements that are threatened by the current context and determine ways to alleviate these threats for your culture to thrive.
• Ask each employee to suggest 15 ideas to improve your culture. Organize them, consult your team, and quickly implement the ones that were the most popular.

A Few Ideas to Inspire Your Happiness Committee

• Identify risks: Clearly communicate the resources that are available to your employees for their mental and physical health. Offer your support, identify the employees that are most affected by the crisis and check up on them frequently.
• Show empathy: Even if the situation evolves, it can cause various types of stress. If possible, allow your employees to adopt a work schedule that suits their situation. In order to avoid compromising on quality work, focus on effectively managing deadlines.
• Encourage informal discussions: It is during informal meetings that it’s possible to get a sense of your team’s feelings and exercise your leadership. To connect with your teams, encourage directors to open up and share their experiences.
• Give breaks: Whether they be for a group meditation, or a coffee break, encourage employees to take a short break every hour to spark their productivity.
• Coworking: Encourage your employees to practice remote coworking with their colleagues. Concretely, they can set up a meeting on Microsoft Teams to work together for a few hours. This initiative can break isolation before you go back to working at the office.
• Happiness is essential: Find ways to unwind as a team. Whether it be on Slack, WhatsApp, or another platform, initiate casual conversations.

Would you like to share your internal communication challenges with us? Or ask us your questions? Drop us a line, we want to hear from you.