Work happiness: a 'hot topic'! More than ever, we are looking for work happiness and increasing it. Logical, after all, our work is where we largely spend the week. The good news? Scent can have a positive effect on this. How? You can find out here!
More and more employers recognise the importance of happy employees. Just as well, since almost a quarter of working people in the Netherlands only give happiness at work a 6 or lower. According to US happiness guru Jacob Morgan, happiness even leads to profit. For instance, research for his book 'The Employee Experience Advantage' shows that organisations that invest in happiness at work make four times more profit and have forty percent less staff turnover.
In addition, work happiness has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Happy employees radiate happiness to customers. As a result, they experience better service, leading to - you guessed it - unexpected smiles!
Work happiness is, among other things, about having positive emotions. Did you know that scent can influence these emotions? Indeed, as much as 75% of the emotions we experience every day are partly determined by what we smell. For instance, scent can make one feel better about oneself, think more creatively and be more productive. But diffusing scent has more benefits.
Thus, the scent of lavender and eucalyptus in our working environment can help reduce stress. Not entirely unimportant, as stress can lead to reduced performance and a bad mood. By reducing stress through scent, we feel better and our performance improves. Moreover, floral scent, like lavender, can also reduce stress and give us a positive boost. Beneficial for workflow!
Lemon and mint scents, on the other hand, improve concentration, productivity and performance accuracy. Lemon scent can also lead to fewer mistakes. Take the Japanese research (Oboh, Olasehinde & Ademosun, 2014), which shows that lemon scent increases your alertness and helps prevent mistakes.
We also see in a study (Varney, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2013) that scent has a positive effect on absenteeism rates. For instance, a pleasant scent increases employee well-being. Happy employees are healthier, have lower absenteeism, and are less at risk of dropping out due to illness or burnout symptoms. In short, scent contributes to long and happy work!
Many factors influence happiness at work. And so scent also contributes its part! Discover what else scent can do in your office.