Happiness at Work

I was responding to very insightful comments made by Yuriy Tokarev on my previous article A Random Event. Yuriy was touching on a very important subject of happiness and link between happiness and factors such as money. This discussion is an important one, as we spend so much time at work, happiness at work becomes an important factor in our lives.

As I was thinking about comments made by Yuriy, I came across an article shared on LinkedIn, title of the article was These 10 Companies Have the Happiest Employees. This is North American centric survey and extracted from top 50 list compiled by Comparably.com.

There were two very interesting things in that article;

First thing I noticed and it could very well be my ignorance but I have not heard of 6 companies which are in top 10. RingCentral (Ranked 2nd), HubSpot (Ranked 3rd), Peloton (Ranked 4th), Farmers Insurance (Ranked 6th), Medallia (Ranked 8th) and Experian North America (Ranked 10th).

When you look at top 50, most would not recognize more than a few names. Most famous companies, trillion dollar companies and most innovative companies are missing. Instead what you see are companies; someone like me outside of North America has never heard of. Lesson I see from this is; for employees it does not matter how valuable the company they work for is, what matters most is how those companies value them.

Second interesting thing was that most questions asked were about quality of life instead of remunerations. Common sense would suggest employees gave high rating because company paid them well, this is not entirely true. That brings me to the questions which were asked to compile the list of companies. These questions says a lot about shifting trend among employees, rating employees gave were not solely based on pay and benefits, out of 9 questions asked only two are linked to money, rest are related to quality of life. Below are the questions.

• Is your work environment positive or negative?
• Do you believe you’re paid fairly?
• Are you satisfied with your benefits?
• Do you feel burnt out at work?
• Are your company’s goals clear, and are you invested in them?
• Are you typically excited about going to work each day?
• Do you look forward to interacting with your coworkers?
• Are you proud to be part of your company?
• On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend your company to a friend?

Being a good employer these days is about creating a safe and positive working environment for the employees. Aligning them with companies vision, guide them that their contribution is linked to overall progress of the company. They should feel that they have a role to play and they matter, they are just not a staff number instead they should feel that they are valuable members of the team.

Friend of mine was asked to leave his company after more than a decade long service, he had an disagreement with his management, it is not relevant to this discussion if he was at fault, what is of importance is subsequent events that followed his termination. When he protested he was told, you did no favor to the company, you did the job which you were paid for. In essence this was true but that send a very clear message to other employees in his company that this is a transaction, time-work vs salary.

Association with the company should be a proud one, I was walking on the ramp years ago and I saw this cargo aircraft of another company parked and mechanic was cleaning the cargo door. I was very intrigued because knowing the work patterns, this was his break time before the next aircraft lands. In sweltering heat of Sharjah why was he cleaning the aircraft which was not even "his job". I walked over to him and asked him why are you cleaning the aircraft and I have not forgotten his response 20 odd years later, he said to me with pride "Because this is my aircraft". I smiled and walked away thinking what company had done to deserve such sense of belonging but I felt guilty as my sense of pride was not half as much as him.

Some companies have started to see long service employees as liability, while some cherish and celebrate long service employees. little gestures can have a great impact on sparking employee's sense of pride and belongingness with the company, lets take an example of Amazon, when new employee joins Amazon, they are give Blue badge, once they finish 5 years they get yellow badge and colors changes as their years of service progresses. These colors become sense of pride to the employees, they get instant recognition, this gives them sense of belonging to the company. I believe more companies should feel proud to have long service employees and give them the recognition they deserve.

In the end business is in business of making money, profit matters. companies can make profit either by considering employees as a transaction based resource or treat them as partners. Companies are run by people and they make policies which have profound effect on employees lives. They must think what they are leaving behind. This reminds me of something Leo Buscaglia wrote.

“Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, 'Did you bring joy?' The second was, 'Did you find joy?”

My little addition to above para would be, if you did not bring joy, there is no way you will find joy.