4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

The Happiness Trap

Should you expect your employees to love their jobs?

In a recent article called “The Tyranny of the Forced Smile,” Paul Jaskunas doesn’t think so and he challenges the expectation that:

“Employers want to see passion. If you don’t love your job, you’re expected to act as if you do, and every so often, in performance reviews and presentations, you are called upon to articulate unalloyed enthusiasm.” Jaskunas feels that expecting everyone to have “lovable jobs” is an unrealistically high standard to set of most positions.

But is it?

There is substantial academic and practical evidence, including findings from our own employee survey work, that one of the strongest contributors to satisfaction in the work you do comes from the opportunity for self-expression and personal growth. Finding meaning at work comes from being engaged in the work that you do.

The level of meaning an individual sees in their work is driven, to some degree, by their own personalities rather than by the work itself. Some view their job as merely a chore they have to endure while others view work as the core of their lives.

However, personality is not the only factor that determines whether someone gets fulfillment from the work they do. It is possible to take action to bring your job into stronger alignment with your values, strengths and passions. Employees can cultivate a stronger sense of self-awareness for creating that can foster a greater feeling of purpose in what they do, rather than self-sabotaging their own job satisfaction.

Eight Ways Goofing Off Can Increase Employee Engagement

Your To Do List Can Wait

If you think working around the clock is going to increase your chances of success you couldn’t be more wrong. Discretionary effort, giving above and beyond, is not the same thing as working without stopping. Focussing solely on your ‘to-do’ list gives it the power to run your life and set you on a course for burnout, that could have long lasting negative impact on your quality of life.
In her recent Forbes article titled, Take a Break From Your to Do List, Liz Ryan says, ‘Your life will unfold with or without your conscious intervention, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a say in it? Wouldn’t it feel incredible to get up in the morning and know that you are on your path, doing just what you were sent down here to do?’
Ryan is telling us to take our lives into our own hands and step away from our to-do list long enough to ask ourselves what our life’s purpose really is. This doesn’t mean we should switch jobs, but that we should be more pro-active about keeping our work in perspective. The old proverb ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ is as much alive today as it was in 1846. It is just not healthy to work all the time and we are far more likely to be satisfied workers who are engaged with our jobs if we enjoy a break from our to-do lists once in a while.

Maximizing the Smartness of Teams

Three Drivers of Success

“All of us are smarter than any one of us” is a favorite phrase of one of our senior analysts. This simple statement effectively summarizes the power of teams – by working together, a group of people can often develop many more creative and powerful ideas than can individuals working alone. And we know from our employee survey experience, a strong feeling of teamwork is often named as one of the strengths of a highly motivating work environment. As several different employees summarized recently:
“I enjoy a challenging, fast-paced environment where you never know what will land on your plate today. Interacting with people, strategizing as a team, and seeing the fruit of your labor enhance the operations of the entire operations is extremely rewarding.”
“Our team environment allows for open speaking about anything.”
At the same time, though, we’ve all been in endless meetings without any clear direction and have been part of teams that achieved little more than to frustrate and anger all of its members. This ambivalence towards teams led three researchers – Anita Woolley, Thomas Malone and Christopher Chabris – to ask a fundamental question:

“Psychologists have known for a century that individuals vary in their cognitive ability. But are some groups, like some people, reliably smarter than others?”

Curiosity is an Essential Ingredient for Achieving Employee Engagement

How does curiosity have anything to do with employee engagement?

It begins with fear. Fear stops us in our tracks and blinds us to possibilities. Having the courage to overcome our fears sounds like a plan but what is the actual means to overcoming those fears and how do we actually put that concept into action? Author Warren Berger spent time with Brian Grazer, reputed to be one of the most successful producers in Hollywood to find out what is the source of his inspiration and discovered curiosity is his greatest asset. “Curiosity is what gives energy and insight to everything else I do” writes Grazer in his new book A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. Grazer explains that his penchant for wondering and questioning has consistently led him to new ideas and fresh opportunities, while also helping him to overcome fears, broaden his thinking, and become a better manager of others.

Manager of Others?
How does curiosity effect how we manage others and how does this have anything to do with employee engagement? Walt Disney claimed curiosity was a key to his company’s success, “Curiosity keeps us moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

According to Grazer curiosity helps us get comfortable with being uncomfortable and in a work environment it helps to be able to tackle new tasks and overcome the fear of failure.

New Survey Proves What Employees Want Most

And What Employers are Failing to Deliver

We interviewed over 17,000 workers across North America to find out what they want most at work. And what employees want more than anything else is to be recognized for the work they do. Across the continent, being recognized, and yes being rewarded too, is what employees crave most. What the survey also revealed was that these same employees who want to be recognized feel their employers fail to provide it. The discrepancy may seem like bad news but we hope employers will see this as an enormous opportunity.
For employers who choose to take action and make a commitment to acknowledging their employees’ work, who trust and communicate openly with their staff, listen and respond to their suggestions and create opportunities to learn new skills, only good news lies ahead. Here at Insightlink, we have been privileged to work with employers determined to make a change. What we believe is that to achieve employee engagement, the first step has to be to measure it. Only when you really know what employees are feeling can you begin to take action. Once the problems are identified then the real work begins and action plans can be created and executed. This is an exciting time for any organization because the promise of a better, more productive workplace is what lies ahead.

Google's Recipe for Employee Engagement

And it Might Sound Corny

Google does everything well, including keeping and inspiring its employees. How they do it is not really a secret and to help others learn from their experience Laszlo Bock, the Head of People Operations at Google, has written a book called Work Rules.
Bock says it might sound corny but people really are the most important thing at Google. They take hiring very seriously and say that, despite receiving 2 million applications a year, they hire only several thousand of the 2 million applicants, which ‘makes Google 25 times more selective than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton’.
Google, Bock says, has actually built a sophisticated infrastructure that results in every application getting consideration—and the company even has a team to review applicants who’ve been rejected from the regular process, just to give a second look in case someone potentially valuable has been missed. Google is picky about who they hire and that has been one of their secrets for success.

"It's our people," he insists in an interview with Fast Company, acknowledging that it's the kind of answer that can sound a little corny. But it's also a reference to how intensely the company focuses on the hiring process—choosing people well and reaping the rewards from its selectivity.
Once you are hired by Google life keeps getting better and not just because of the perks. People matter at Google, "We actually did a survey once where we talked to the first 100 people hired at Google and asked them what made the place special, and one of the top two reasons everybody said was the quality of the people," he continued. "Another thing that’s special about the company: We give our people tremendous freedom. And we underpin our people practices with real science and data. We use science to figure out what makes teams work."

Why Most Companies Can't Turn Their Plans into Results

The Crucial Step is Overlooked

Ever notice how hard it is for companies to turn their plans into results? According to Harvard Business Review a full 75 per cent of organizations assess themselves as ‘poor’ at turning plans into results.
With the best of intentions, companies spend millions of dollars and hours developing solutions that don’t come to fruition. In his article titled ‘The Crucial Step 75% of Companies Get Wrong’, Fred Pidsadny, founder and President of FOCUS Management, says the answer is so simple that it’s often overlooked.

Engaged Employees Take Real Vacations

To Be Engaged Sometimes You Need To Disengage

So you are on vacation. Is that with or without your laptop?
I don’t think many of us can really go away and totally disconnect from our work anymore. It’s not like the old days when they only way you could get in touch with the office was to call from your hotel room. Some of us sneak in time online because we can’t help ourselves, we simply cannot disconnect, not fully, no matter how much caring family members accuse us of working all the time. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Find Out What Your Employees Are Really Thinking

10 Ways to Get Candid Feedback

With so many articles and blogs written about bad bosses, do you ever wonder if you might be one? It is rare to find someone who is completely and totally self-aware. Most of us have a few blind spots about ourselves and don’t know all our strengths and weaknesses. Still, self-awareness is one of the most critical leadership competencies and is considered by many to be the single most important predictor of leadership success.
Feedback is one way to close the gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. To make it meaningful and actionable you want the feedback to be honest, which is hard to get, especially from people who don’t want to offend or upset you.
Management and Leadership expert Dan McCarthy gives us 10 great ways to get candid feedback and he recommends that when you do get it, keep your mouth closed and just say thank you!

How Meetings Can Mess With Morale

Well-Organized Meetings Are a Sign of Respect

There should be a zero tolerance policy for bad meetings. Bad meetings can be annoying and a complete waste of time. But don’t just complain about them….do something! If you call a meeting, respect your teammates by taking the time to learn how to run a good meeting. They will respect you in return and respect, as we know, is a key ingredient for achieving employee engagement and job satisfaction.
So if you have been winging your meetings so far, this blog is definitely for you!

Dan McCarthy writes a well-known, award-winning leadership development blog called Great Leadership. He recently published the simplest and most effective 8 easy steps on how to make a meeting tolerable and productive.

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