3 ways to maximize your workers’ happiness — and performance
Today’s guest post is by Cathy L. Greenberg and Barrett S. Avigdor, authors of “What Happy Working Mothers Know.”
Every business, regardless of the industry, has to learn to do more with fewer resources. On the people side of the business, that means you need to get the best performance possible out of your employees. And, you need to do that without an outlay of cash for incentive bonuses, training or team meetings at 5-star resorts.
The secret to maximizing performance is to create an environment in which your employees are happy. A happy employee is highly engaged, flourishing and has achieved an acceptable work-life balance.
We know that high employee engagement leads to high performance. Recent studies by the Corporate Leadership Council, Towers Perrin and Development Dimensions International, show that a highly engaged workforce results in a 20% improvement in employee productivity, a 50% reduction in unplanned attrition and a 23% increase in customer satisfaction. But employee engagement is just part of the answer. To truly maximize the performance of your workforce, you also need to create an environment where they can flourish. Here’s how:
- Create a positive environment. Human flourishing, according to Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is “to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness…growth and resilience”. When a person is flourishing, they are thinking with their entire brain and make more ethical and creative decisions. In order for employees to flourish, they need a highly positive environment. They need frequent positive feedback, an environment in which ridicule and gossip are not tolerated and they need to know that they will not be punished for making a well-intentioned mistake.
- Manage based on expanding strengths. A strengths-based approach to management can unleash tremendous productivity, creativity and enthusiasm in a workforce. As described in “Go Put Your Strengths to Work” and other books by Marcus Buckingham, the strengths-based approach empowers employees to shape their job into their dream job. It begins with the employee identifying those activities at work that energize him (strengths) and those activities that drain him (weaknesses). He then discusses those strengths and weaknesses with his team and his manager and together, they find ways to gradually give him more of the work that energizes him and to find strategies to shrink the amount of time he spends on activities that drain him.
- Be flexible wherever you can. Many employees, especially those with young families, put a high premium on flexible work schedules and feel loyal to employers who provide it. We recently did a survey of over 1,000 women around the world for our book, “What Happy Working Mothers Know.” In response to the question “If you make one change about your work environment, what would it be”? 26.3% said they would increase the flexibility in their work schedule. Men crave flexibility, too.
Image credit, pixdeluxe, via iStock
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Tags: Productivity, work-life balance
Categories: General Management
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Posted by Wally Bock on September 8th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I always heave a deep sigh when I see yet another article that claims, “The secret to maximizing performance is to create an environment in which your employees are happy.”
I’ve read the studies you site. I read the findings as “companies with an ‘engaged’ workforce are more likely to be profitable.” The studies identify correlation, not causation. It could be that if you make a company more profitable, that will drive your engagement scores. Or it could be that both profitability and engagement are driven by another key force. More likely a mix of forces create both productivity and improved morale and some of them interact to reinforce each other.
If you are going to measure the impact of engagement or happiness on profitability, you need clear and common definitions of your terms. And you need to make your comparisons at the team level, the only level that really matters for these factors.
Even leaving aside the validity of the studies, your points aren’t likely to create increased profitability by themselves. A company can do the three things you suggest, all of which are good things, but they won’t necessarily drive profitability. Like the original Frontier Airlines, you can have a company full of happy workers right up to the time you file bankruptcy if you don’t pay attention to competitiveness and productivity.
Posted by Bret Simmons on September 8th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I have to strongly agree with Wally. Have you ever actually seen any of this published data? Good luck. All these “studies” ever report are their findings, and we trust them that they had well designed studies with valid and reliable measures. Since we cannot see the data, there is no way to disprove what they saying. That’s bad science and bad management.
Posted by Barrett Avigdor on September 8th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
In response to Wally and Brett, I would agree that just creating a positive environment, managing to strengths and being flexible will not increase profitability. You also need to have a good product or service, a solid marketing strategy and good leadership. Assuming you have the fundamentals right, the 3 things we suggest will enhance employee productivity and retention which should help the bottom line. The impact of employee engagement on your profitability also depends somewhat on the nature of your business. In a business that relies heavily on “knowledge workers” using creativity and making good decisions, these recommendations will have maximum effect. There is a lot of science (much of which we cite in our book and in “What Happy Companies Know”) to support the connection between happiness and good health and happiness and high functioning. It also appeals to common sense. We all are at our best when we feel appreciated and safe.
Posted by A Three-fer on Work and Happiness | Corporate Idealist on September 9th, 2009 at 9:14 am
[...] perspective, SmartBlog on Workforce covered the happiness-productivity connection in a piece called 3 ways to maximize your workers’ happiness — and performance: “The secret to maximizing performance is to create an environment in which your employees [...]
Posted by Mike Zambon on September 10th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
The findings of this post are fascinating. It would appear the factors outlined here are pretty straightforward and something I bet most organizations claim to do. However, recent reports from Kronos (http://tinyurl.com/muko9u) and others show the workforce does not feel engaged based on negative productivity. In addition, the statistics show a majority of workers are dissatisfied with their employers. I would take this one step further, and say many companies have serious employer brand issues on their hands, and could very well impact their ability to attract and retain top talent.
http://blog.yoh.com/2009/09/employment-brand-how-important-is-it.html
-Mike Zambon, Blogger at The Seamless Workforce
Posted by CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Employers Blog on October 15th, 2009 at 7:35 am
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