How did your role of happiness officer develop, and what strategic function does it serve?

We realised that we had to create a real community inside Raiffeisen. As a bank, we have headquarters and different branches, so we decided to create a function that would help people to communicate and create a community.

Then we wanted to go one step further because we don’t want just people to communicate, we really want our employees to be satisfied, to come in the morning and say, ‘I’m happy to go to work’. We informed ourselves about this function, which is really developed in America, for example… it was very important for us to use this title.

It’s really a must-have function. The main objective was to keep our employees motivated: when they’re motivated, they’re more engaged. The more you’re engaged, the more you’re performant; the more you’re performant, the more you bring money to your business.

What were the initial employee responses?

At the beginning it wasn’t easy… I had to gain their trust, show why it’s important to have a happiness officer. I knew it would take some time to implement this function and for people to understand why it’s important.

How was it to take on this role just before the pandemic began?

It was a great opportunity because people were separated, not working at the same place. I had to create an online community… Our focus was really giving information to our people, creating a lot of different communication channels, keeping employees motivated.  We put in place daily meetings, organised a lot of games… As happiness officer, I always say you have to inform, involve and integrate. If you manage to do these three things, you motivate employees.

Would you say this role is more HR or comms?

I’m in the HR department, but it’s a very transversal role because I’m in contact with each department, each branch, the management board. I have the role to link our employees to the employer. For us, it’s important to have no border: we all have the same interests, there’s no employer on the one side and employees on the other. Our employees should work and act like they are also the employer because they are Raiffeisen.

Do you think this function is worthwhile for any company?

Of course. If there is one employee, there should be one happiness officer… We have 650 employees so we are also able to have one person as happiness officer. If you have a smaller company with 25 people, you cannot afford to engage one person to do just that. Someone who has an HR role can add this function to the role...

It’s a state of mind, being a happiness officer… For us, it was not a response to a problem. We wanted to create this function because we also want to anticipate the needs of future generations. We know they want to see a sense in what they’re doing… They want to be flexible, have advantages, be free to give and share ideas, participate, be integrated.

How can you measure happiness?

You can take some KPIs, but you will never be 100% sure it’s just because of your happiness officer. You can, for example, measure it by analysing turnover because job satisfaction is inversely linked to turnover.

We did a satisfaction study in 2021 and saw that more than 90% of our employees are globally satisfied. We see there is an evolution, people are more integrated. We have a lot more feedback: people are writing me new ideas, coming by my office to talk, opening up, more integrated and involved.