This article steps through how the functionality works. For more information around why we are doing this and the benefits we hope it brings check out our dedicated page here, or watch this personal message from our CEO, Andy Wright:
🦸🏽 With great power comes...
An important note to begin: the Happiness Coach work was developed with key principles in mind to ensure it is used to guide positive change. The feature was guided by principles and research from the SMART Work Design framework, developed by Professor Sharon Parker at the Future of Work Institute.
The Happiness Coach aims to wrap up team happiness insights alongside financial metrics to build a more complete picture of business health. Streamtime believes that profit shouldn't be the only measure of a healthy business, and we want to drive a new vision in our product.
To help provide business leaders with a more holistic view of not just their business but their people.
It must be low friction, embedded into daily practices, so not to take too much time.
Positivity and transparency are key — at all times we want it to be clear what the data will be used for and who will see it. Where possible, the language used will be of a positive nature.
Control over one's own data. Team members need to be fully aware of who sees the data and what the data will be used for.
🩺 A weekly check in
All subscribers have the Happiness Coach enabled as part of the full feature set. Subscribers, and those who have both the feature and admin permission access, can choose to enable or disable the Happiness Coach for any or all team members.
Activate the Happiness Coach by heading over to Team Members, selecting the team members you want to activate, then add Submit Happiness Reports and/or View Team Happiness Summary. Be sure to use the bulk action feature to turn it on for a group all at once.
For staff that have the feature enabled at the last working day of the week an additional 'To Do' will appear asking 'What was this week like?'.
The To Do can the be dragged onto the emoji that best matches how the team member felt at work this week.
➕ Additional Information
The team member will then be met with the option to provide additional information.
Confirm the emoji (can be changed at this stage)
Why the team member felt this way. The options are based on the five pillars of the SMART work design model, developed by Professor Sharon Parker at the Future of Work Institute.
Notes that contributed to the week. The team member can choose to add a specific comment that will not be seen by anyone else in their organisation, or highlight a particular job they worked on that may have contributed to how they are feeling.
Where does it all go?
Subscribers, and any other team member with Reporting and Financial access are able to view the Dashboard, where team happiness insights are displayed. The average team responses are mapped against logged time in the period, with job detail to come.
Each individual will get a personal dashboard with their own scores and a running history of their individual information.
🙋♀️ So... what's in it for me?
You're a leader, or manager. Your workplace culture is key to how you work: you can tell when the atmosphere is a little low, or when people are energised. But you have no real metric or system to track what affects this, and how jobs and work are structured per person. You might have tried other methods before, but they're all 'add-ons' and don't connect with the day-to-day projects you're running, plus it's hard to get people to do it because they're already busy.
If your team members report their scores each week, the Happiness Coach will show you insights to help you make decisions — all in the same platform you're using to do your day-to-day. A particular client is demanding or doesn't inspire stimulating work? Charge more. A different job inspires and motivates your team? Maybe you can be more forgiving with the time spent on it, or the total price. Your team members are more connected with their own work design, and might share some insights or measures that could help craft their role and progression with you.
You're a team member. You're already in the To Do screen, logging time. You might as well log your mood and why you felt that way at work. You can see all your history, and look at times you felt better, or less than thrilled at work. You might remember what you worked on that week to help you understand your own why. You can log this info in the same place you log your time, so it can't be any easier to track. Plus: the more responses your leaders get, the better picture they have of the team (anonymised and aggregated, of course) work design so they can make changes that benefit you. And they're telling you they're ready to listen.
💁🏽♂️ What data is displayed and who sees it?
Team members who have view Happiness Coach summary permission will receive an email the following week with aggregated, anonymised results. Both a history of their own responses (vs the team), the individual team scores and some business insights based on the team's responses.
Team members with submit report permission only will not see any aggregated responses, but can access their own scores, notes and logged entries via their own personal Dashboard. Nobody other than the team member themselves will be able to view their own responses.
🙅🏿♂️ What data isn't displayed or seen?
Your individual responses (including emoji, jobs or pillar selections, and notes) are not seen by anyone other than yourself in your organisation. For research purposes, Streamtime may view specific responses to help guide future development. The data will be completely anonymised — linked to user ID numbers and not names.
What's the upshot? We're looking to show you insights that help you and your business become healthier and happier by ensuring that the team's internal perception of happiness matches the happiness reported. As time goes on, we'll expand on this to help you assess projects and companies by more than just financial metrics through additional reporting.