In Search of Employee Happiness

Before boarding my last flight to Europe, I bought the latest copy of the Harvard Business Review (January-February 2012). The front page title had captured my interest: "The Value of Happiness - How Employee Well Being Drives Profits."

Over the years I had often pondered the question of employee satisfaction and its impact on the bottom line. Line managers, I found, are pretty skeptical about the notion that happy employees are more productive. The research I had studied during my graduate years pointed to a negative correlation between job satisfaction and productivity. That is, over the longer haul, employee dissatisfaction affects productivity because employees might decide to leave, file grievances, increase their absenteeism, show up tardy, or behave in an unsafe manner, thus increasing the associated costs of hiring, grievance processing, accidents, or work scheduling.

In humorous terms, I would point out that happy cows might not yield better or more milk, but unhappy cows might gore you. I would get a thunderous laugh and that is about all.

The HRB article does a great job of documenting how the pursuit of contentment has shaped the West's culture and economy. The author Peter Stearns walks you through some interesting comparisons. For example, most East Asian cultures have lower expectations than North Americans are accustomed to. Some Latin American cultures, on the other hand, have higher expectations than their North American cousins. Stearns goes on to point out that attitudes toward happiness do not just differ, they can also change. Understanding the nature of such change can better illustrate the context for happiness and allow us to assess its advantages and downsides.

Research by my alma mater, Louis Allen Worldwide, shows that focus on mere satisfaction should not be the end point. Rather, we should focus more attentively on the level of employee engagement. That is, the extent to which employees are willing to go the extra miles matters a great deal. Employee satisfaction might be a pre-determiner, but it is not necessarily the end result. Research by several organizations shows that highly engaged employees make a greater contribution to the success of their organization than less engaged or disengaged employees. Consequently, the more highly engaged are your employees, the better is your competitive advantage. In a scenario where honing our competitive advantage is key to our survival, the focus on employee engagement is not only an offensive but also a defensive weapon.

During my career, I have had the opportunity to work in highly engaging work cultures where the focus on organizational success outweighs personal stardom and 'lone ranger" temptations. The energy is more formidable, and the satisfaction level much higher than what I have experienced working in cultures where co-workers were not as connected and committed.

Our choice as leaders is rather simple: highly engaged employees and better results versus less engaged or even disengaged employees and lower results. On the surface, the choice seems simplistic, yet in practice, as we focus on other factors we take this fundamental choice for granted.

I am sure that you have your own war stories to tell. I bet that you will find in the recesses of your mind many examples where some organizations you worked at treated this subject differently and with different results. I welcome your observations and comments.