How to Succeed? Make Employees Happy

Apple. They focus on making a majority of their customers happy. They don't seem to do anything remarkable for their employees, however.

Microsoft. They don't understand how to make their customers happy, nor do they know how to make their employees happy.

All three of these companies are successful. There's a continuum of success, and how far you get down that continuum depends on many variables. In the end, it's a matter of business philosophy and focusing on what the business does best.

When business people say that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value, I always cringe. Businesses exist to make something people want, and then to receive money in exchange for making or doing it. The point of a corporation is to make the most awesome "something," such that lots of people pay you for it. Simple.

To make the most awesome "something," you have to focus on what that something is. Whole Foods is a retailer, so their employees interact directly with their customers. In Whole Foods case, the "something" they provide is a point of distribution of goods. Making their employees happy will have a direct, positive impact on the quality of the customer experience in the store. But this is not really quantifiable because you can't have a before/after controlled study. The happiness that Whole Foods tries to instill in its employees permeates the culture of the company; it's how they do business. They can't simply turn off their company happiness meter and see if profits drop.

You can, however, compare Whole Foods to the other health food stores that don't focus on employee happiness... and the results are obvious.