Employee happiness and business success are linked

https://www.economist.com/business/2019/07/28/employee-happiness-and-business-success-are-linked

by benryon • 7 years ago

690 216 7 years ago

economist.com

neonate• 7 years ago

http://archive.is/TErZI

xtracto• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/vnwmK4

izzydata• 7 years ago

Amazon seems to be doing alright regardless.

umvi• 7 years ago

I know a lot of engineers that work for Amazon that are happy. Warehouse workers on the other hand...

throwawaysea4• 7 years ago

...are experiencing pay and conditions that are vastly better than other warehouses. See https://quillette.com/2019/07/19/the-problem-with-tourist-jo...

mrb• 7 years ago

It's just one random data point but one of my personal friends said: «I still have many friends & family working in Amazon fulfillment centers across the country, and every single one of them says it’s the best job they’ve ever had.» https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1154275824951943168

MaxBarraclough• 7 years ago

The overwork has been well reported, but the unpaid time spent in mandatory daily security checks, seems to get overlooked.

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...

Consultant324522• 7 years ago

There's an Amazon warehouse near me. My neighbor works for USPS. Amazon is poaching tons of their employees and it's really hurting USPS because Amazon is so much better. If he wasn't holding out for one more year to get full retirement from USPS he would have jumped ship too. Instead, he's hoping to work for Amazon part time during retirement.

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.

Matticus_Rex• 7 years ago

Warehouse work sucks. Amazon's warehouse work is above average for warehouse work.

starpilot• 7 years ago

And the entire gaming industry.

frobozz3• 7 years ago

Ursine genes and woodland defecation also seem to correlate.

xyzzyz• 7 years ago

Yes, I am also shocked to learn that employees aren't happy in companies that aren't doing well. What's next, are you going to tell me that people who live in successful cities are happier than those in decaying ones?

dougmwne• 7 years ago

I know that's in jest, but boy have I experienced that one. There's nothing like being surrounded by a whole city of people who've lost all hope to get you out of bed in the morning.

ggm• 7 years ago

Actually, I have sometimes done what I think is my best work, in toxic work places. It was fleeting, but the mood at the time was "this place sucks, but boy, am I getting it on".

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.

brailsafe• 7 years ago

At my last case, the company doing really well put a lot of stress on me to maintain. Overworked and undercompensated, I developed a terrible case of Ursine dementia in combination with Grizzly depression.

robocat2• 7 years ago

They did look at causation: "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."

Many of us understand the other causation arrow (corporate unsuccess leads to unhappiness!)

Jazgot2• 7 years ago

In some cases corporate unsuccess leeds to happiness. I've seen this in my case once. And hope that I'll not need to see this again.

TheSpiceIsLife2• 7 years ago

Does it go something like: when the company tanks due to mismanagement > shareholder value suffers > employees feel vindicated?

dooglius• 7 years ago

Isn't that still confounded by new management or shift in thinking at the top? You need an RCT to tease everything out.

hanniabu4• 7 years ago

Seems obvious for anybody that's had a job. I'm more self-motivated than the average person. I'll go above and beyond on tasks and take pride in my work, which benefits the company. But if I work in a shitty workplace, even my work ethic and quality will drop and I might even start doing less than is required.

chrisweekly• 7 years ago

Yes, this! "Be happy first", per "The Happiness Equation" by Paschra.

mr_crankypants• 7 years ago

A preceding B does not imply that A causes B, it only implies that B doesn't cause A. Which doesn't really reduce the world of possible causal relationships by all that much, since there may be any number of other factors that weren't considered.

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.

clhodapp• 7 years ago

Sure. There is a subtle difference between "things that make employees happier also improve business performance" and "making employees happier improves business performance", but in both cases you generally want to do things that make employees happy if you want business success (you just might want to be a bit more selective about which happiness-boosting things).

crimsonalucard2• 7 years ago

Correlation does not imply causation.

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.

robocat2• 7 years ago

Yeah, confounding* variable C causes happiness and profitability (A and B).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding

ph4• 7 years ago

Serious question, why post something for discussion if it's behind a paywall?

tannerc2• 7 years ago

I'll bite because it's a reasonable question. I think linking to paywalled content is allowed because there are fairly easy ways around paywalls, but posting a roundabout directly goes (I believe) against HN policy.

An example of how to get around the Economist paywall is already elsewhere in this thread.

Sonnol532• 7 years ago

I use outline dot com to get around paywall :)

tomhoward2• 7 years ago

but posting a roundabout directly goes (I believe) against HN policy

Not true; it has long been customary for people to share paywall workarounds in the comments, and the moderators welcome/encourage it.

TheSpiceIsLife2• 7 years ago

Doesn't The Economist let you read four(?) articles a month without subscribing?

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

ergothus4• 7 years ago

I've seen these arguments repeatedly, yet I only see this mattering to those companies where employees have a relative level of power and choice (e.g. non-game industry programmers, etc). Elsewhere, the attitude appears to have remained: "use them as much as possible". Consider assistant managers at your local chain store. Pick a chain! Outside of a handful of companies that are well noted for their bucking of the trend, regardless of market, these employees will be used and abused, year after year. If my anecdotal experience is representative, the more they actually care about the job, the more they'll be abused. Managers get the same, and by the time you get to district or regional managers, they are mostly the people that survived the lower levels...where "survived" means "did the abusing" not "got burnt out and quit for greener pastures".

b_tterc_p• 7 years ago

Anything customer oriented tends to benefit

nine_k5• 7 years ago

Why, this makes sense.

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.

asdfasgasdgasdg2• 7 years ago

Another hypothesis that equally well explains the data: employees at successful companies tend to be happy because the rising tide lifts (almost) all boats. Companies that are doing poorly will tend to look to cut staff, wages, and benefits, which could be a source of unhappiness. Etc. I don't really think the evidence presented here gives much reason to believe that seeking the well-being of your employees will do anything for the bottom line. OTOH, it's easy for me to believe that improving the top line will improve your employees' happiness.

narag• 7 years ago

Most of the happiless business seems susceptible of robotization.

ergothus4• 7 years ago

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

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.

rednerrus• 7 years ago

Look at the success Trader Joe's and Costco have had. Either company could replace the happy, experienced checkers, who care about what they're doing and how they're doing it with $10/hr people who have no stake in what's going on. The important distinction is the stake that your employees take in what's happening.

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.

Nasrudith• 7 years ago

I suspect one aspect behind these connections in both directions - agency. Those who have outsized influence can make increasing demands and gain more control over the enterprise. If they are competent their changes will have a positive impact, they feel motivated and both company and them will experience growth. If not well either it gets corrected or things go pathological and they and/or the enterprise goes downhill.

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"!

Data_Junkie3• 7 years ago

What's being left out is unhappy, discardable employees cost you customers. Customers you would otherwise have never get put in the spreadsheet.

JJMcJ• 7 years ago

Remember the analysis of Losers/Clueless/Sociopaths in corporate life.

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.

rightbyte4• 7 years ago

Sociopaths? The groups should be audience, losers, contenders and winners.

CobrastanJorji• 7 years ago

I agree that there are many companies that ignore this correlation, but I'm not convinced those companies are making the most rational choice.

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.

ergothus4• 7 years ago

I'm not convinced those companies are making the most rational choice

Neither am I - they're just making the common choice.

ghaff• 7 years ago

They tend to be somewhat upscale in terms of ingredients, employee training, overall experience, etc.

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.

Consultant324522• 7 years ago

In my limited experience big chains vary greatly based on locale, presumably due to those particular stores being owned by different franchises.

lotsofpulp3• 7 years ago

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.

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.

erikpukinskis2• 7 years ago

This is true even within tech companies, but for hourly workers. Hourly folks are treated like trash. I’m talking people who live in the bay, and work side by side with other professionals in SF.

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.

whatshisface• 7 years ago

What kind of jobs to hourly people hold? I mean, if the company hires consultants then some of the Exalted Developers themselves will be hourly.

pmiller2• 7 years ago

None of that is true at my company, in my experience. It is a large company, so I might not have the full picture, but my little corner of it is not like that at all.

squirrelicus4• 7 years ago

Good ideas come from all skill levels. But good idea vs bad idea ratio is fundamentally what separates those in or out of brain space. To get your ratio up, you need training and experience in making good ideas more frequently and bad ideas less frequently. And then you get placed in a space where your ideas are your core output. Those people tend to be salaried the most often. And they don't like to spend their time sifting through the bad ideas of untrained people when they could instead be generating more good ideas per unit time. I don't see the problem here

ben_jones• 7 years ago

People are joking in this thread but I think the REALLY BIG problem is that a lot of American workers are increasingly internalizing their compensation needs above other needs like health, happiness, or social well being. When we should be concentrating on a lot of our personal issues, we kick the ball down the road saying "oh when I have more money" or "oh when my career progresses" when we would be much better served by acting on them immediately and with highest priority.

bsanr22• 7 years ago

Perhaps because so many Americans are financially insecure, and long-term health, happiness, and social concerns take a backseat to simply surviving the next month?

arrozconcosas4• 7 years ago

Getting out of the hole of "surviving to the next month" requires a few years of developing and investing in yourself to build a valued skillset. It's very hard to do when you don't have a clue about what that path can be. I took a lot longer to get to my current spot because I didn't know this path existed when I was younger because no one around me even knew this industry existed.

rhizome4• 7 years ago

It is a LONG standing dominant philosophy in US business that "morale" is pretty much the last thing to be concerned with. Someone not working well? Get rid of them and replace them with someone better. This has been going on for generations, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's taught all day long, every day, in every business school in the nation.

RhodesianHunter4• 7 years ago

It's not.

drawkbox• 7 years ago

"Put that coffee down!! Coffee's for closers only."

Sonnol532• 7 years ago

Compensation is easily measurable and comparable than something like 'happiness' and wellness. I'm definitely not on the company's side for neglecting company happiness, but it so so subjective and it's probably easier for them to set this standard and have people find happiness and balance in their lives.

H8crilA2• 7 years ago

You can start with true working hours per week. Simple honest rules - checking email at home counts, being paged counts double (because I can happen anytime, so you need to be alert), eating lunch does not. Transit time counts. Divide by 5 - that's your average daily load due to work. You get more than 9 - that's too much, I hope your compensation is superb (i.e. well above average).

klyrs2• 7 years ago

It's not just workers. I've repeatedly asked for reduced hours, or more vacation, in lieu of a raise. Every time, my employer's response has been some form of "we can't do that for unspecified technical reasons" or "if you get that, everybody would want it." Honestly I don't get it. The big irony is that several people in the upper strata who are ostensibly making these decisions only work part-time and have at least 2 C-suite jobs

ChuckNorris89• 7 years ago

I think their answers are pretty representative. Your requests wouldn't hurt the business per se but if they would bend over to accommodate everyone's small requests, the company would loose the illusion of control they have over their slav... err ...workforce and they can't have that.

RhodesianHunter4• 7 years ago

Who has two C-Suite jobs? The people at that level are frequently the ones working the longest hours.

mighty_bander• 7 years ago

Amen to that. It's easy to trade away free time and benefits when you're 25. Once that means not seeing your kids as much, money doesn't seem so important. As my ex's dad used to say: "Not a lot of people lie on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time in the office."

ThomPete• 7 years ago

Business success and employee happiness are better linked.

randyrand• 7 years ago

It's generally pretty clear that when a business is failing, the employees won't be very happy.

atian• 7 years ago

Businesses are systems of people. Those that affect people nonetheless affect the business. You are then in the realm of which organs the people can survive without.

samnwa• 7 years ago

It's the opposite. Business success (e.g. being able to pay people to work less hard and enjoy free lunches, etc) is linked to happiness.

mlthoughts2018• 7 years ago

It reminds me some of Peopleware, where an argument is made that through a focus on quality of output, the speed of production is actually faster than if you focus explicitly on the speed of production.

WheelsAtLarge• 7 years ago

I worked for a company where management tried hard to keep employees happy when it came to benefits and yet, for the most part, they/we were a miserable bunch. It seemed that it was never enough. I'm not saying that the benefits were extravagant but they were very good.

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.

danielvinson• 7 years ago

Happiness isn’t just a factor of compensation, it’s also if people enjoy what they are working on, how they work, and the people around them.

visarga2• 7 years ago

I think it's essential to put a moderate load and leave some space for creativity and new ideas to be tried out. I for one get tired of executing, sometimes I want to play out my own ideas.

lettergram• 7 years ago

My startup is working on identifying and maximizing happiness for this reason [1]. Largely the reason we believe this is the case, is because people tend to stay where they are happy.

“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.

[1] https://metacortex.me/

adfm• 7 years ago

Take a look at the SMR/Glassdoor Culture 500 if you're interested in measuring company culture. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/culture500

achenatx• 7 years ago

I use a book called "first break all the rules"

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?

jypepin• 7 years ago

it seems to me that most of those questions should influence positively employee happiness.

karmelapple• 7 years ago

It does seem like it would correlate, but one might also think free food would contribute to it, too. These points help focus on precisely what kinds of things to perhaps focus on to contribute to happiness in certain ways.

I’ve read the book, and it’s a good one.

paulintrognon• 7 years ago

That's the point: those questions influence both employe happiness and company success. But employee happiness does not _directly_ influence company success.

VonGuard3• 7 years ago

Can confirm. Love my job, answered pretty much yes on all of these. Company's doing pretty damn well.

baxtr• 7 years ago

Where do you work? :)

mav3rick• 7 years ago

Same here.

the_arun• 7 years ago

These are really good set of questions to test "human" nature of the company

sandmansandine• 7 years ago

These questions are also rephrased versions of questions mentioned in most management books I've read that are focused on employee development. The more I dig into employee development and management the more I realize a lot of startups, claiming they're data-driven, just skip over all data related to actually managing people, managing work spaces, etc.

zild3d• 7 years ago

I realize a lot of startups, claiming they're data-driven, just skip over all data related to actually managing people

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

[0] https://www.cally.ai/

seattle_spring• 7 years ago

Bingo. I see this all the time with companies who claim to use some variant of "agile methadologies": heavy use of tracking and upward visibility, but a complete disregard for the parts that protect developer productivity and independence.

miguelmota• 7 years ago

Those are all excellent questions. The last question is very important, since employees who feels like they're 'stuck' in their position will become downhearted and lose motivation.

tdsamardzhiev2• 7 years ago

What do you mean when you say employee happiness? Because this list is pretty much what I'd reckon constitutes employee happiness.

RomanBob• 7 years ago

For you.

Some people just want to sit for 8 hours, go home, and watch football.

username903• 7 years ago

Happiness can come from many sources not on that list. For example, you could hire cheerleaders to entice your male team and make them happy, but that is unlikely to make them more productive. Sounds ridiculous, nobody would do that right? But a company in China did.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/business/china-women-tech...

afiori• 7 years ago

I would imagine happiness of employers: "How happy are with your jobs on a scale from 1 to 10"

Could be 8 because of hours and location.

avian• 7 years ago

I agree this is a pretty good list. However I feel like a lot if this should be a side effect of the general culture in the company.

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.

BoredomHeights• 7 years ago

I answered no to a lot of these... not exactly an eye-opener, as I'm looking for a new job. Still, I'm not super unhappy with my current role, but this does help put into perspective why I want a change.

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.

ticmasta2• 7 years ago

You highlight an important point: your direct manager can really make or break a lot of these but they're ultimately beholden to the same macro environment as you. I try to shelter my direct reports but if we M&A, cancel major projects or change strategic direction my teams are not isolated from the impact which can be really hard on things like working towards specific career goals and directions.

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.

stanislavb• 7 years ago

*Bookmark this

mtrimpe• 7 years ago

Interestingly that sounds like almost exactly the same points the book The Progress Principle brings up (which is based on one of the largest qualitative diary based research projects on company success.)

nabla92• 7 years ago

The study this article is based on uses the same Gallup client database and the same questionnaire.

(Table A6: The Gallup Q12 Instrument)

anilakar• 7 years ago

Oh god. Two and a half out of twelve. Time to create that LinkedIn profile...

splittingTimes• 7 years ago

We use the anonymous employee feedback via "office vibe" to monitor various things like employee happiness, engagement, wellness, personal growth, relationship with peers and managers, etc. And questions like the above often pop up in the surveys.

Can only say good things about the tool.

goatinaboat2• 7 years ago

A former employer got Gallup in, intending it as a self-congratulatory exercise for management. Imagine their surprise when Gallup reported we were in the bottom 6%...

Nevertheless at the time and for a few years after, that company dominated its sector.

daveheq• 7 years ago

Answering yes to these questions indicates a happy employee... how did the book authors determine the opposite?

username903• 7 years ago

Employees who answer no to many of those questions can still be happy and employees who answer yes to all of them can still be unhappy. I'd wager that they are strongly correlated, but it is still important to separate them.

gbersac• 7 years ago

Sadly this book is not available on kindle.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 7 years ago

13. Am I a capitalist?

refurb• 7 years ago

Oh jeeze. My employer obviously uses this book as well. We get these survey questions all the time and now I know where they came from.

webninja• 7 years ago

13. In the last two years, has my salary increased more than my costs of living?

andyidsinga• 7 years ago

I've read the cliff-notes version of first break all the rules. (its floating around the web). It has the list - and also interesting discussion of talent and having employees in positions where their talents are used. IIRC - it also suggests never trying to change people - which I've taken to heart in both work and personal aspects of my life.

geichel• 7 years ago

"Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat in the air that you don't love?" ― Joss Whedon

odonnellryan• 7 years ago

Fitting title. I remember close to 10 years ago I proposed a lot of these ideas on my company as a low level manager. I was only asked "how old are you?" And told "your paycheck is us telling you you're doing a good job." Aha

simonebrunozzi• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/vnwmK4

erikig• 7 years ago

Linked as in causation or as in correlation?

wb14123• 7 years ago

I think business success makes employee happy.

ourcat• 7 years ago

"Founder passion" is everything.

And nothing you ever do will be as successful as something you're passionate about.

LoSboccacc• 7 years ago

can't read the article because limits. do that provide some source with the claim? doesn't appear to be that the fortune 500 are particularly happy places to be and would love to see that list correlated with Glassdoor votes.

visarga2• 7 years ago

can't read the article because limits.

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.

anonytrary• 7 years ago

I haven't read an economist article in months and it still gives me limits. Something tells me the limits are bullshit and they just want an annoying paywall by default.

lcuff• 7 years ago

The fact that this idea is deemed worthy of an article in the Economist, and then hits the front page of HN is, IMHO, a sad statement on the current quality of thinking about how to run companies. It's hard for me to summon anything but 'duh' in response to the headline. For intelligent commentary, give me Peter Drucker's "The Effective Executive".

lightedman• 7 years ago

It's a shame YC/HN can't find an article that doesn't require signing-up to read.

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.

cromat3• 7 years ago

AKA water is wet.

Double_a_92• 7 years ago

Now the question is how they are linked. Does the business become successful because you make your employees happy, OR can you afford to make them happy by having a business that runs well?

mapcars• 7 years ago

That is kinda obvious.

beck030762• 7 years ago

According to Gallup, highly experienced teams can experience a 20% lift in productivity.

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.

nabla92• 7 years ago

The connection to profitability by industry is interesting:

    manufacturing 0.42
    finance       0.22
    retail        0.14
    services      0.10

Correlation coefficient < 0.20 is very weak correlation.

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.

beck030762• 7 years ago

You are right. These sectors have higher impacts on profitability by increasing employee engagement. Computer Software, Internet, Information Technology and Services, Marketing and Advertising, Health, Wellness and Fitness

mrfredward• 7 years ago

I notice the correlation coefficients there are lowest for retail and services, industries I tend to think of as crappy to work in. That makes me wonder...are companies behaving rationally and only optimizing for happiness where it matters, or is there a statistical artifact here where they can't find a correlation in industries where every company's workers are miserable.

xtat• 7 years ago

You might be surprised how many otherwise skilled and well meaning people would argue against this in their own companies, especially prevalent in the bay area.

maehwasu• 7 years ago

This seems intuitively obvious, and I say this as a former business owner. However, the causality is backwards (as I’d expect from economists).

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.

known• 7 years ago

Due to self-actualization in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#...

jpswade• 7 years ago

How do you measure happiness anyway?

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.

minusSeven• 7 years ago

Could someone transcribe the article here? The website wants me to subscribe.

Employee happiness and business success are linked

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