CHO: be surprised by the attributes of this new profession

Are you happy at your job?

If your answer is ‘no’, know that there is a new title, considered by many to be the ‘profession of the future’, which was born to change this feeling that affects millions of people in Brazil and the world.

Chief Happiness Officer (CHO), whose translation means Chief of Happiness, is responsible for the satisfaction of a company’s employees.

That’s right what you read: this trend has been growing in the corporate market and its attributes range from measuring, through surveys, the well-being and contentment of employees, to facilitating dialogues and real connections between them.

In addition, of course, to plan and implement new actions aligned with leadership, in order to ensure a work environment where people feel happy and fulfilled.

In practice, the results offered by a CHO directly impact the financial performance, innovation and consequent success of companies.

And it’s not difficult to understand why: a happy team produces more, is more creative and loyal, promotes the business first hand, has better relationships and has less absenteeism, which generates greater growth, profits and time optimization.

Do you want to know more about this new profession, its main functions and how to successfully assume them?

Check it out in the reading below!

What is CHO?

It all started with a Danish company called Woohoo Partnership, which developed a methodology in 2003 that focused on motivating its employees.

Hence, the Chief Happiness Officer (CHO) certificate was born: an influencer of happiness in the corporate environment, at the forefront of debates about mental health and balance between personal and professional life.

And to justify its true role, it is necessary to understand that the concept of corporate happiness exceeds that long-awaited coffee or lunch break, and organize happy hour activities.
Thus, the style of approach varies according to the type of company and its diagnosis, but we can say that it is a constant feeling of recognition and appreciation of each professional in their sectors of activity.

CHO: What are your main functions?

As we have seen, CHO is the bridge between the company’s organizational culture and its employees, in addition to being the trainer of training, internal policies and everything in its power to make the execution of the job pleasant and fun.

Now let’s follow your main assignments.

Humanized treatment

It seems the most obvious thing to do, however, the cause of higher turnover, dismissals and low engagement in companies is precisely the bad treatment directed towards employees.

According to a survey carried out by SurveyMonkey, 9 out of 10 Brazilians say they are unhappy and dissatisfied in their careers, an alarming fact that deserves a lot of attention from CHOs, especially in times of crisis and digital transformation.

Therefore, a good basis for a CHO to tread is to treat people with respect and how they would like to be treated, and this includes knowing how to listen to issues such as career timing, professional development and conflicts.

And, of course, being able to trust people and provide constant feedback, incentives and recognition that each job matters within the process.

Freedom of expression

A committed CHO has as a key point guiding the path of freedom for team members to express new ideas, allied to the autonomy to execute them.

After all, what leader or manager doesn’t want to be surprised by the talents and skills of their employees?

In complete agreement with Steve Jobs: “It makes no sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do, we hire smart people to have them tell us what to do.”

And it’s up to CHO to help them find the right balance between work and personal life, to make each employee that much more committed and inspired.

Company values

Whenever the CHO has a decision to make, a conflict to resolve, or a need to innovate, its starting point will be the company’s values.

Almost any article or report on employee engagement will tell you that values ​​matter and that it’s not enough to have them on a piece of paper.

The CHO professional will have to assiduously state and reaffirm them, put them into actionable behaviors, and allow people to demonstrate these values ​​in their activities.

For this to happen, the company’s recruitment process must be based on value and the candidate properly evaluated and rewarded as such.

Promoting a culture of growth

Sometimes people need someone to believe that they can grow and experience this satisfaction in practice.

That’s where CHO serving comes in: being that person at any stage of employees’ work experience, encouraging them to build on their strengths and capitalize more on opportunities for growth.

To this end, the Chief of Happiness (CHO) should promote this process through clear and assertive communication between all levels of the company and use personal and professional development tools.

Team Spirit

It is in the hands of CHO to plan events that promote team interaction as it is beneficial not only for employee productivity but also in terms of organizational happiness as a whole.

It is not news that the performance of teams is a clear indicator of the overall performance of a company, do you agree?

And what’s the point of recruiting the best talent, without them knowing how to work together and achieve the expected results?

This is where a CHO should step up its role in offering happiness programs such as preparation, team building exercises and ongoing support.

Possibly, the roles of a Chief of Happiness (CHO) will undergo major structural changes over time to efficiently adapt to the business demands of the near future.

CHO: How to become a Chief Happiness Officer?

It is worth mentioning something quite interesting about the position of Chief Happiness Officer (CHO): any professional can assume this position and become one.

There is also the possibility of absorbing the technique inherent to their functions to apply it to their current position.

For that, the interested party needs to look for one of the organizations that offer this certificate, which we talked about at the beginning of the article.

Another aspect to consider is the training time: an average of 3 to 5 days and the content is taught by psychologists and specialists in corporate reality.

Currently, and this already counts as another advantage, there are just under 200 qualified professionals with this certificate of Chief Happiness Officer (CHO), in Brazil.

However, there is a 200% growth in the search for courses in the area, which means that soon this number will be much more expressive!

In short, the role of the Chief Happiness Officer (CHO) is gaining more relevance due to the fact that we are in a chaotic corporate context for mental health, also due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

And discarding it without further research and analysis is not a wise thing to do for your company.

Quite the opposite!

You see, by monitoring and analyzing happiness levels in your organization, you will be able to accurately predict and manage your employee engagement and retention.

And this is priceless to highlight the importance of assigning a special meaning to the CHO activity in question!