Staff Happiness
Happy staffers make for a happy tavern keeper. Here is how to find out what troubles your staff and what you can do about it.
At a quick glance you see how happy your staffers are by looking at their meter for Happiness in their detail info.
Bring up the tooltip for it to go into the details. Very telling is the "Change over last 24 hours". This collects all positives and negatives and is a great starting point.
As your staffers go about their day these number will change.
Important: Not all positive or negatives will react immediately to changes that you make, such as sleep arrangements or temperature. They can take up to a full 24 hours to reflect the new situation as your staffer is experiencing the new situation.
If you see something in that list, that is not clear to you, check out the traits of that particular staffer. Usually there is something about their personality that has an influence on their happiness.
Pay extra attention to staffers with the "Influencer" trait - their happiness spreads to other staffers, in both, negative and positive.
Higher tier staff
As you hire higher tier staff (which are generally more efficient and better at their job) you also need to make sure you create a comfortable environment for them. Check out the tooltip for the tier icon to learn more about each tier.
Effects of happiness
With their happiness changing so will your staffers' performance (this goes both ways).
You see this info int their skills info panel.
When things go from bad to worse
When your staffers are very (critically) unhappy for too long, they will suffer a mental break. This will result in a specific effect/task according to their personality trait.
After a mental break, staff experience catharsis and will recover their happiness for a time. This one will eat a bunch of stuff, others might drink entire barrels, start a fights, go around and set fires, it's a long list. So best not to let it come to this!
Giving a money bonus
You can give most staffers a money bonus to increase their happiness for a while, but this has a cooldown period of 2 days and is really not a solution if they are unhappy but merely a temporary fix.
Keep everyone happy
You might not be able to keep everyone happy at all times, such is life of a tavern keeper. Pay attention to their needs and wishes. Find out what they need (some basics are generally the same for everyone, while other things are individual and can vary quite a lot).
There are always up- and downsides to everything. Make sure there are more upsides and you'll have happy staffers.
Happy staffers, happy Tavern Keeper!
PS: If you get stuck at any point, don't hesitate to reach out via the ingame feedback tool (default key F3).