A Better Workplace --- Meridian Group's Newsletter, Number 43, 4-15-05

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Can Your Employees Say, "I Love My Job?"

The Conference Board* reports that there has been a substantial decline in employee happiness. As you will read here, building a values based culture builds both employee happiness and corporate success.

The Conference Board study reveals that only half of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from almost 60% in 1995. Only 14% of today's employees are "very satisfied" with their work. One quarter say that they are simply "showing up to collect a paycheck".

The report indicates that it doesn't seem to matter how much you earn. People earning more than $50,000 a year are only slightly happier than those earning less than $15,000. Age doesn't seem to affect employee happiness much either. And only half of US employees have trust and confidence in their companies’ leaders. Where employees are most satisfied is in their commutes to work and in their relationships with colleagues.

Why Are Workers so Miserable?

Explanations include rapid technological changes, rising productivity demands, changing employee expectations, corporate scandals, outsourcing, and pension and health plan reduction or elimination. Notice that none of these can be affected by the average manager a supervisor. Let’s look at ways you can increase your employee’s happiness, and along with it your company’s success.

Bridge the Conflict Between Top Management Drives and Employee’s Values

There is a disconnect between executive management and employees. High-level managers tend to be driven by achievement, expansion, competition, profit, and mobility.  A few are also driven by envy—of those who earn more than they do—and greed. As we read almost daily in the news, the financial temptations on senior-level executives are hard to resist.

Senior-level managers often project their own drives onto those below, and all too often find their employees wanting. "Those people lack a sense of urgency”. Does that sound familiar? This executive drive for expansion often works against what most people value, such as family, friendships, peace, love, and a deep sense of meaning and satisfaction in what they do. For those propelled by drives, our culture offers many opportunities. Those moved mostly by values often feel they have no home in the business world. It doesn’t have to be this way. Management can open their arms to all players, not just the driven.

Account for the Real Cost of Unhappy Employees

"Employee’s unhappiness should worry companies. How would they respond if they discovered half the factory equipment was malfunctioning?" says The Conference Board. The cost of unhappiness is rarely quantified but we all know it is high. The cost is partly obscured because unlike malfunctioning equipment, it is in the nature of people, that even unhappy employees will get the job done, if only minimally.

Few of us would pay for a dozen eggs and be happy if when we got home found only two in the box. But companies do that every day. They hire a person and then structure that person's job so the person can only bring 10 to 20% of what they are capable of contributing. The result is what most companies accept as normal: the high cost of turnover, low morale, ho-hum productivity, absenteeism, workplace conflict, poor communications, low customer satisfaction, and high workers compensation costs.

For a more detailed list of the potential improvement areas, and the corresponding cost areas, see http://www.companyculture.com/basics/benefits.htm

Get What You Pay For

Traditionally a company hires a new employee for a specific job. You need welding to be done, you hire a welder. You want a delivery, you hire a driver. The notion that a welder or a driver has other capacities, needs, and desires, whose fulfillment could contribute significantly to corporate success and expansion, lies outside of the average manager’s imagination.

But that is the nature of people. People are happiest when they are able to be what they can be, to feel productive and creative, and be recognized for what they do and who they are. Study after study reveals that most people willingly trade payroll dollars for job satisfaction. Company recruiters know this well. With high levels of employee unhappiness, the recruiter who can promise a job where the employee can fulfill his or her true needs, a job that is based in real values, will draw their top candidate. (Sadly, what the recruiter promises and what the job actually delivers is frequently different.)

Unhappiness, Motivation and Productivity

As I have mentioned in previous newsletters, I have helped managers create a more engaging and satisfying workplace and seen productivity double. Such dramatic improvements should be expected. Most managers who have participated in culture change have experienced firsthand what we each intuitively know; that people want to bring more of themselves to their job and are only limited by the work culture. People have an almost unlimited capacity to contribute to corporate success.

Let People Contribute

If managers want happy employees and corporate success, they can tap their biggest resource, their people. All they have to do is set the stage, give people half a chance to be what they want to be. This is why there is so much talk in the business literature today about values. It is sometimes difficult for driven executives to accept that a value based culture is satisfying, highly profitable and easily achieved. Most people want it and will bend over backwards to help managers get it. For driven managers it just takes a little "thinking outside their box." It is fun, satisfying and profitable.

What Values? Ask Your People

If you would like to involve your people in building a value based culture, visit http://www.companyculture.com/topics/AskPeople.htm

* Take This Job and . . .  by Lynn Franco, The Conference Board, No. 138, February 2005.

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