I was interviewed for this excellent article in the New York Times about why measuring employee happiness is very important but also very difficult.

Here’s the central quote:

So, where’s the disconnect? Are surveys the wrong tool? Are employees not telling their managers the truth about their dissatisfactions? Or are the bosses not listening?

The answer is a little of all of the above, said Alexander Kjerulf, co-founder of Heartcount, which creates software designed to measure employee happiness. “The traditional approach has become a rote exercise that’s done because everyone does it,” Mr. Kjerulf. “But few people actually see any value in it — and that goes both for employees and management.”

He noted that the surveys too often are too long and conducted too infrequently. Employees worry they will face retribution for negative responses, and companies don’t act on the feedback they receive.

That’s the problem in a nutshell – companies typically measure the wrong things and then make everything worse by not acting on the data employees supply.

That is why we created Heartcount, which is the best tool for measuring how happy employees are at work.