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How Happiness Can Save Your Organization

The much talked about Tony Hsieh has a crazy idea: people can actually be happy at work. His idealism defies the convention of what we know as “work”. Tony created a workplace with unconventional perks driven by what he calls “the science of happiness”. His contention is that if employees feel a personal connection to their organization they will work harder for less money….who’s laughing now. Zappos discovered that through company sponsored social events employees developed closer friendships with their co-workers. In having co-workers who identified with a common personal purpose the company became a collective working for a common cause. At Zappos, people go “above and beyond” their job description to deliver a “wow” experience for their customers. There is a sense of ownership among Zappos employees not because they have stock options but because they believe in the organizational cause.

After Tony Hsieh’s presentation at the 2011 Society of Human Resources Management annual convention, HR professionals started asking a question: “How can my company be more like Zappos?” Your company may not be a start up, your current employees may not have written your core values, and you may have tenured employees who are not interested in recreating the wheel. The bigger question is: “If I can infuse happiness into our workplace, how much will employee retention improve?”

Here are 3 tips that will bring happiness into your workplace without having to restructure your entire organization:
Create Alignment
Encourage Feedback
Reward Effort

Core Values & Your Values
Can you list your company’s core values off the top of your head? If you can, your organizational purpose is clear and mostly likely aligned with your personal purpose. Core values bring founding principles into the modern day workplace. Core values are applicable to every employee, in every location and every department. So how do you bring your core values off the wall and into the daily routine?

By formulating a nomination program that is driven by your core values a few things happen:

1. Employees engage in core values and their extended purpose.
2. Most core values are verbs….by learning the actionable purpose of these grandiose themes, employees get a better understanding of the relevant intent.
3. Employees are further able to align their personal purpose to the organizational cause.

If we are all working toward the same thing, and we all believe in it, there should be no question of what motivates us to succeed. Our personal goals are aligned with the organization’s goals. We should know where we stand, be confident in our actions and have the courage to make better decisions. If we believe in what we are doing and have co-workers that feel the same way…there would be no reason to leave a job!!!!!!!!

Open Door…?

Very few employees are bold enough to tell the Executives what they think. They feel their input, encouraged or otherwise, will only be held against them.

We want to admit that HR has direct executive influence, but our CEO has a lot on his/her plate. Therefore, the open door needs to begin with line mangers and extend to the executives. If feedback is to be encouraged it also needs to be met with action. If you ask me what I think and ignore it, I will most likely not speak up again.

Organizations have been successful getting input from the trenches through:

• Anonymous, well-designed surveys
  • Survey’s fail because the questions are too bland or employees fear they will be held against them….plan accordingly.
• Town hall meetings
  • With well-formatted facilitation, all hands open discussions can be a productive idea sharing event (not a gripe session).
• Focus Groups
  • Nothing speaks like real time case studies. If you can get well-selected employees together and design a template for successful interaction; you will have actionable data that is directly relevant to your employee population.

Don’t Kid Yourself, Everyone Likes Gold Stars
There has been discussion about Generation Y and their assumed discontent with tangible rewards. That is hogwash!!!!!!!! Everyone wants their effort validated and to be rewarded accordingly. This is an inherent human need that does not have an applicable age bracket. Some Baby Boomers like I-pods and some Millennials like logoed watches. It’s not about the gift!

Without breaking the bank the following rewards are essential to ensuring an employee’s sense of belonging in your organization:

• Accompany every performance review with a service award
  • A memento of appreciation after an hour assessment of employee worth puts a positive spin on this annual interaction.
  • Reward above an beyond behavior
    • It’s Friday evening at 7pm and Judy in customer service has just spent 2 hours of overtime logging orders for the week. A line manager needs to give Judy a pat on the back and an “on the spot” memento of appreciation. Sending Judy off into the weekend with points in her employee appreciation bank will ensure that she do not spent the weekend sending out her resume.

In summation:

Happiness Produces Profits!
An Aligned Organizational Purpose Keeps Everyone On the Same Page!
People Feel Valued Through Purpose, Encouraged Feedback and Rewarded Effort!

Practice Purpose, Create Happiness and watch your Organizational Garden Grow!