Employee happiness and business success are linked
economist.com
economist.com
It is also based on gallup data. They determined that employee happiness was not correlated to company success. They did find that the following questions in order were highly correlated to company success.
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
I’ve read the book, and it’s a good one.
Correlation just means that when goes up, the other tends go up (or down, as the case may be). It doesn't make any claim on whether there's a direct influence or not. Hence the common refrain: correlation is not causation.
You could hire a bunch of jolly simpletons, have the happiest company in the world, and go bust before the year is out.
You could make it perfectly clear what is expected of everyone, give them all the kit they need, implement all their valuable suggestions then depress them by paying them minimum wage and discouraging fraternisation and have a similar outcome.
Absolutely. We started Cally [0] to help people be more data-driven about leading & building teams. There is tons of research on what actually makes a team high performing, engaged, inclusive, but most managers are taking shots in the dark
Some people just want to sit for 8 hours, go home, and watch football.
This list jives with the internal motivators that appear to drive really great work above the survival level: safety, opportunity and recognition.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/business/china-women-tech...
Could be 8 because of hours and location.
I've seen several times people going to management seminars where they teach this kind of stuff and it can come of as extremely off-putting when just boxes like that try to be checked.
Faking personal interest or friendship is worse than showing no interest. People previously telling me to fuck off now addressing me by first name and giving praise with a smile (but still telling me to fuck off between the lines) I quit at least one job because of things like that.
The ones that stand out most to me are 6 and 11. My old manager definitely encouraged development and would talk about progress. Company's shuffled around a lot and now it just seems like everyone's kind of going through the motions, just trying not to screw up or get let go. No one's discussed advancement, opportunities, growth, etc. for a while now, and that coincided with my decision to leave.
My biggest self learning while becoming a manager is that the developer acid test of "smart, gets stuff done and not an a-hole" still applies, maybe more than before. I used to get personally invested in my work and now I care about each person.
(Table A6: The Gallup Q12 Instrument)
Can only say good things about the tool.
Nevertheless at the time and for a few years after, that company dominated its sector.
In every industry, there are employees whose influence on the company success is outsized, and who are hard to hire or train. In software industry, they are experienced engineers and product managers. In a fashionable restaurant, they are experienced cooks. In an airforce, they are experienced pilots and repairmen. Etc.
When these people are happy with their work, they achieve great results. When they are unhappy, they look for ways to conveniently jump ship, because they have a number of opportunities elsewhere waiting for them to become available. They are in short supply. Every boss has an incentive to keep these people content and loyal.
OTOH every industry has positions for which supply is plentiful, compared to demand. Aspiring game developers without experience, dish washers, burger flippers, etc, can be readily hired, paid little, and easily fired, too. There is no incentive for their bosses to walk an extra mile to keep them happ, especially when pressing them a bit more yields an extra bit of performance, so they mostly aren't happy about their jobs.
As noted in other comments, this DID check for causation and found employee happiness led the benefits, not the other way around.
Article: "However, the authors cite studies of changes within individual firms and organisations which seem to show that improvements in employee morale precede gains in productivity, rather than the other way round."
A theory could be that employers see the improvement in productivity before they are measureble by the methods employed and therefore are happier. E.g. bad processes are replaced which gives happier employees before the gains are evident.
There are booming industries where the boom mostly floats top executive boats, though. Ask an Uber driver, or an Amazon warehouse worker.
[1]: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
Now you need the job more then the job needs you; eventually you may find yourself in a position where employers compete to have you in the team instead.
That's the theory - but I don't see the distinction you listed ever proven. People do it because it's the easiest thing, that doesn't make it the best thing. I can just as easily theorycraft that happy employees improve production ACROSS THE BOARD, with lasting and compounding results. The studies that argue this never make the distinction you've listed.
Pressuring a bit on the suckers that got to cling to their jobs still looks like a good short-term policy, especially if the higher-up executing it is also not very happy but is clinging to the job.
That is, the best org is where everyone is level 4 or 5 on the "Tribal leadership" scale [1], but a lot of orgs are at level 2 at the lowest rungs.
[1]: https://emergentbydesign.com/2012/06/28/a-step-by-step-guide...
The people who are closest to and most affected by problems are the best suited to solve them. If you hire a fleet of people who don't care about solving those problems, they won't get solved. You hire a fleet of people who give a shit day in and day out, you're going to get those nagging issues that, in the long run, cost you the most.
Those companies that think that boots on the ground are replaceable in any industry overestimate the importance of management.
I rely on my people to keep me abreast of the issues, as a manager, that I need to be aware of. I expect them to fix the issues that are within their power to fix and escalate the rest of them.
"People that don't love what they're doing, that don't like what they're doing, they have problems. They're not enjoying it, they're not putting in the extra hours, they're not being creative in trying to find new solutions. So when you love something and you're passionate about it, you put the extra effort into it naturally, you try and get creative with it naturally, and you end up more successful naturally because it's something that you care about."
The reverse where employees feel restricted is bad for both productivity and morale. While procedures have their place (more consistentcy) they also have costs. That sort of strategy may actually work in some cases or be neccessary but it often caps or bottlenecks growth both individually and institutionally. For example medicine is a conservative field partially because of the complexity of the body and the stakes. For every "germ theory" introduction of experimental ideas there are thousands of "just try high doses of amphetamines or radium to strengthen the heart"!
The Losers are low level people who know they have lost the battle to be a big shot.
Clueless are the strivers, the first level or two of management, who think they have a chance to be a big shot.
The Sociopaths actually do have a chance. Not all of them are evil but they all know 100 hour weeks won't do it for them.
Lumbergh in Office Space is classic Clueless. He has surrendered any chance of human contact in his job, but he will never get any higher than he is.
You have to be a certain kind of person to cut staff - some dedicated and valuably skilled - in order to boost the short-term return on your stocks. Likewise, you have to be a certain kind of person to think of customers as a resource that can be farmed and exploited with dark patterns and other manipulations. And in more extreme cases - you have to be a certain kind of person to make non-payment of contractors a deliberate policy.
People who score high on empathy won't be comfortable with those kinds of actions.
If Burger King significantly increased the salary of their workers or otherwise found ways to improve their morale, would it benefit Burger King in the long run? I tend to suspect so, but it would be hard to prove.
The burger joints known for taking care of their people are also usually seen as being pretty good burger places, and that may be causal, but it also may be that they're just slightly "upscale" of the other burger places and also spend more on the ingredients.
Neither am I - they're just making the common choice.
That's not to say that Burger King or McDonald's couldn't do better. I don't really have enough experience with them as a customer or anything else to have a real opinion. But I suspect that, if Burger King were to try to improve their experience in a way that forced them to raise prices by 25% they'd lose a lot of business from people basically just looking for the cheapest burger.
See also the experience of JC Penney and Ron Johnson. A lot of people are pretty much in the position where they have to shop on price.
Keep in mind, though, that if a larger portion of money went to the workers, less of them would be in that position.
It would not benefit Burger King as its clientele’s main goal is purchasing at the lowest price and they will happily go to McDonalds if prices went up. Not all businesses have the luxury of selling to people willing to spend more than rock bottom, and you can see that in most cities, only one or two areas where the upper middle class live will have the business that pay more than the minimum.
In a position like that you almost have to take a “durrr, I dunno!” attitude to everything, because if you try to talk to salaried people about what you need to do your job, you are looked at like a dog who just started reciting poetry.
Every now and then a salaried person will try to engage, take you seriously, but once it bounces up the chain of command that an hourly person is acting like they have something to contribute, it will be quietly shut down.
Seems like the business model requires hourly people stay out of the “brain space” entirely. Otherwise you’d have to pay them a living wage.
Really despicable way to treat people IMO. I don’t see why you wouldn’t want people to be proactive about solving problems.
The again, I’ve seen similar attitudes from engineering managers towards their direct reports.
Additionally, front-line workers can see real problems with how customers experience the product that may not be reflected in the metrics used to evaluate the product, since metrics are inevitably gamed.
The ratio of good to bad ideas doesn't matter if you miss the one good idea you really needed. A company that invests in ways to effectively use the ideas of 'untrained people', as you so delicately put it, can derive a lot of value from those ideas.
IMO, this is one of the reasons why distributed command (as opposed to centralized command) models often work better, particularly in a fast moving environment.
Many of us understand the other causation arrow (corporate unsuccess leads to unhappiness!)
E.g., "I'm not going to help that team because they need to feel the pain of the decision I didn't like."
For example, it could just as easily be the case that adjustments to dysfunctional aspects of the company's internal politics improve both morale and productivity, but the morale change becomes apparent more quickly.
Little known trick to establish that A causes B is to trigger A at will and see if a B is observed.
If you trigger A 100 times and it precedes a B 98 times then you have established causation to a degree. Similar to the correlation coefficient there must be some causation coefficient.
"Turning on my TV at 5 a'clock causes channel 4 to broadcast The Simpsons."
Though if B happens all the time, but also A causes B. Then there's really no way to establish causation.
"The Channel four studio has electrical sensors that will trip and broadcast the simpsons either at 5pm or when I turn on my TV at 5pm."
I'd say that their skillset is defacto not valuable enough for their wellbeing.
At FAANG, the number is most definitely less than 9. Combine this with the freakishly high compensation, and this looks like the best deal one could predicably get on Earth.
Jack Dorsey has 2 (Square, Twitter).
Steve Jobs was CEO of both Apple and Pixar.
It's not that they don't work too much for their own good, and pay themselves as much as they can get away with. It's that they don't see the need to show up at my company every day, but somehow think that highly creative employees perform better at a grindstone.
I agree that a happy employee helps a company be better but you can't buy their happiness thru benefits. The way to do it complicated and it starts by hiring the right type of employee and defining the right company culture.
manufacturing 0.42
finance 0.22
retail 0.14
services 0.10
It would be interesting to see how it correlates with value added. I hypothesize that low in value added businesses like retail or manual assembly in manufacturing, you can't increase profits radically by increasing worker satisfaction. In higher value added sectors like like aircraft manufacturing cough Boeing cough the correlation is probably much higher than 0.42.
“Tribal knowledge” is the single most important thing an employee can bring to the table. It’s also only obtained through time at a given (or related company). At the same time, hiring and training a new employee is the single most expensive cost to a company. So identifying and keeping experienced employees really improves productivity and reduces costs. Which makes it much easier for a business to succeed.
Overall I agree there is a pope/catholic tree/forest moment here, but this is bell-curve overlap venn diagram stuff, the outliers are amusing, but not informative of the trend.
tl;dr slacker finds life in toxic company can be fulfilling.
If things are going well, it usually means you have a monopoly of some kind, which means high margins, which means that it’s easy and important to keep your people happy (including stimulating/challenging them with non-rote work).
It’s when things go south that it all starts to get ugly for everyone.
The causality likely goes the other direction: successful businesses can afford to create better employee environments. If your business sucks, you’ll likely run out of money if you try to first make employees happy and then let that happiness iterate you to success.
That story was basically a plant from Amazon and Quillette is absolutely not a high quality news source.
Evidence?
> Quillette is absolutely not a high quality news source
Really? I find their articles to be written well. They are respectful and balanced in their tone, and provide a lot of evidence for their points.
Are you sure you don't just disagree with their centrist perspective? You've not actually offered any critique of this article.
See Media Bias Fact Check’s overview, in which they’re considered “Right” and to feature pseudoscience and poor reporting [1]. Also see the Wikipedia page on Media Bias Fact Check for citations to show that they’re reputable [2].
See also AllSides' overview, in which they’re considered to “lean right” [3].
[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/quillette/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check
[3] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/quillette-media-bias
> The Columbia Journalism Review describes Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur attempt at categorizing media bias and Van Zandt as an "armchair media analyst."
> The Poynter Institute notes, "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific."
I read through the Media Bias Fact check article on Quillette and it makes bold claims about Quillette having poor sourcing or featuring pseudoscience but it provides weak or cherry-picked examples from a much larger body of published articles. For example, it mentions 'hereditarianism' as pseudoscientific, even though there is peer-reviewed published research supporting it that is referenced in the Quillette article they are critiquing. It also tries to discredit Quillette based on association - it mentions a couple people who have written articles on Quillette and discusses _their_ reputation, rather than directly factually refuting specific points.
If anything, this write-up on Media Bias Fact Check is itself super biased.
AllSides is more reputable but they have also rated Quillette as Center for long periods of time previously. AllSides also mentions this about Quillette alongside their current "lean right" rating:
> Worth noting: some on the team thought Quillette deserved a Center or Lean Left media bias rating. This is because Quillette features classically liberal arguments, but classically liberal ideas are now more commonly associated with the Right. Our confidence rating for Quillette's media bias rating is "Initial or Low."
Also, AllSides's methodology is US-centric - which is different from centrism more broadly.
> The AllSides Media Bias RatingTM reflects the average judgment of the American people. We don't use a convoluted mathematical or artificial intelligence model, but instead have regular people representing the broad spectrum of Americans blindly rate the bias of articles. That produces a fair, verifiable bias rating.
Centrism also means neutral or truth-seeking to some people, whereas to others it refers to a relative position on a political spectrum. I find Quillette to be generally centrist in that it is neutral/truth-seeking because they are willing to take controversial positions and discuss them logically, in depth, with substantial evidence. By and large, Quillette features high quality articles and significant sourcing. No journalistic outlet is perfect and it wouldn't take me long to pull out examples in the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, or other big publications to try and paint a negative image of them as Media Bias Fact Check did.
And to get back on point, no one has refuted what this particular article claims. Amazon has higher pay, better benefits, and better conditions than other warehouse jobs. There is even a comment in this very HN discussion from an Amazon warehouse worker that says "I'm part of the career choice program which pays for 95% of my college tuition, fees, and books for an IT program (which I chose)." And this isn't the only comment in this discussion from an Amazon warehouse worker. If there are claims otherwise, that other warehouse jobs are better, name them and cite evidence.
I do agree with this. I briefly had a few blue collar jobs: it's hard for workers to assert their existing rights, culturally and legally.
Somehow, US courts decided that's allowed. Could've sworn UK courts came to a similar decision recently, but I can't find a source.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2014/12/0...
I'm not suggesting that there aren't problems with Amazon warehouses, but I think a lot of the reaction is from highly educated wealthy liberal types who don't know what it's like to work hard labor jobs.
I've heard a lot of horror stories about Amazon warehouses. I'm sure a lot of it is FUD or whatever, but it seems that even Walmart has better conditions.
Another fun job was to re-palletize boxes. A forklift operator would lay an empty pallet on the ground, then put a row of 25 full pallets next to it in a long row. You had to unstack the 2nd pallet onto the empty one using a new stacking pattern that was more stable. Then the 2nd pallet would be empty. Repeat the process down the row as fast as you can go getting cuts on your hands from the cardboard boxes, leaning over your back lifting heavy boxes without AC in a hot warehouse.
I would like for those kind of jobs are staffed by a staffing company so people can cycle through them rather than having to do it full time. I can put up with a lot for a few weeks at a time.
If true, and if you still buy the same stuff from other retailers (because you still need a coffee maker, for example), the effect is to force warehouse workers into worse jobs.
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? -Expectations are very clear. It's hard to complicate warehouse work I suppose.
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? -Usually, though sometimes day shift doesn't return the hand scanners and I have to look for one, and that sort of thing.
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? -My managers have made an effort to place me where I am most useful. I was slow at one job so they moved me to a more detail-oriented, slower-paced task. (From stow to count, for those who have worked here. After a few months in count, I learned to pick, though I still count sometimes.)
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work? -I regularly receive feedback. Amazon has "e-swag" which is a point system for doing things well and hitting productivity goals. Points can be redeemed for things like T-shirts. I use my points for grocery store gift cards.
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person? -My managers have been very friendly. A former manager transferred back to my building yesterday after living in a different state for awhile, and he made an effort to stick around and say hi to me after his shift. My current manager and I like to meow at each other like cats in passing.
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development? -People are generally encouraging and uplifting here. We talk to each other and recommend applying for positions that open up, and give helpful tips so people can do their jobs better.
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count? -This is the area that I think Amazon should improve on most. The chain of command is difficult to navigate for an entry-level worker who wants to recommend a change in policy. Lots of opinions and suggestions don't seem to make it to the people who are in a position to act on them. But my immediate supervisors tend to be very responsive to suggestions within their power to act on.
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important? -I feel like I'm doing honest work here, getting orders out to the customers. I see it as a valuable, necessary contribution to society and I take pride in my job, though I do not see this as my vocation.
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work? -Many of them are, but Amazon will basically hire anyone. The people who stick around make an effort to do their jobs well.
10. Do I have a best friend at work? -There are many people I look forward to seeing at work every day! I'm always making new friends here!
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress? -I feel like this is the same as #4. We get regular productivity feedback. There's not a lot of room for "progress" when you're doing the same thing every day, besides when the opportunity arises to learn a new task.
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow? -Amazon regularly trains people to do different tasks around the facility. They also offer opportunities for advancement, as well as career skills classes on-site. I'm on an interest list for a CDL class and I just submitted an application to be a trainer. I also had the opportunity to do this social media job!
But, at the end of the day, it's still warehouse work. I haven't worked in a different warehouse but a few coworkers have. The combined pay and benefits seem to be above average.
Given the huge amount of articles that require registration to read, and given HN's supposed freedom of information bend, this seems incomprehensible.
Why can't the mods find a more usable article? Are you that bereft of resources?
How about instead of whining about forcefully-conversant people like myself, you actually allow the conversation to happen with an article that we can all read? That's the point of this site, and if the mods can't allow that, they should step down in favor of someone that can step up to the job.
In before dang and stcb only highlight this comment as 'why people are toxic' while ignoring why they themselves are adding to the toxicity.
If either of you are actually REAL about your site rules, you'll e-mail me explaining why, or you'll talk here.
Only cowards try to hide behind rules without a solid and concise explanation of why they exist.
When I started in a management role, I set out to make sure my team members were happy. As time goes on, oddly enough, you realise that happiness is not chief among the qualities that make for a well functioning team.
I found it is more about an equilibrium or balance.
People don't always have to be happy, they have to be motivated.
If an employee’s output is X, you can take this to (X)*120% by focusing on employee happiness. To put this in perspective, if a 5 member team experienced a 20% increase in productivity, there will be enough additional output that a sixth employee might contribute, but without the additional pay.
In this scenario, an organisation’s savings can be connected to 1 employee’s salary in a 5 member team. Also, take into consideration the additional revenue generated.
If a 500 employee company saw a 20% boost in productivity, it will mean an output of 600 employees at the hiring cost of 500.
And nothing you ever do will be as successful as something you're passionate about.
I often get annoyed at such articles. If they don't want to share, then don't clog Hacker News, reddit and search engines with your amputated text! There are plenty of sources. Same problem for JSTOR articles.
An example of how to get around the Economist paywall is already elsewhere in this thread.
Not true; it has long been customary for people to share paywall workarounds in the comments, and the moderators welcome/encourage it.
But some sites like The Information now have paywall passthrough arguments you can add to the URL, and they seem to be fine.
Anyways, here's the relevant excerpt from the HN FAQ
Are paywalls ok?
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.