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Happy Employees = Hefty Profits

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I can walk into a company and tell within seconds whether or not its employees are well treated and happy on a basic level. The level of employee engagement, warmth and sense of a shared purpose is palpable. It’s something I simply feel after being in the business of talent management for several years. And while my conclusion may be subjective, there’s plenty of hard evidence that shows that happy employees lead directly to better performance and higher profits. Last year revenues increased by an average of 22.2 percent for the 2014 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, these same companies added new employees at rate that was five times higher than the national average.

In other words, it pays to invest in your people. It also happens to be the right thing to do.

And what makes for happy employees? Here’s a list of 5 tools to create a culture and workplace that is growing, dynamic, fun, wildly productive and highly profitable.

1) Pay fairly. At the end of the day, it’s about the pay. Yes, many employees love their work, love their jobs, love their colleagues, but the bottom line is they are there to earn a living. Smart leaders pay people well. This is non-negotiable.

2) Deliver awesome benefits. Whether it’s a good health plan, childcare, transportation, a fitness center or free lunch on Fridays, benefits make people’s lives easier and better. They feel appreciated and cared for, which leads to increased loyalty and a willing to go the extra mile.

3) Keep an open leadership door — and an open mind. Numerous studies have down that when management is approachable and responsive, employee engagement soars. People spend a big chunk of their lives at work, and when they feel voiceless their frustration grows. Actively solicit feedback via social media and old-fashioned management by walking around.

4) Share the profits. When employees share in the good times, their investment in the company grows and they will be far more likely to work hard — and to dig deep during the not-so-good times. When the international literary sensation Fifty Shades of Grey lifted publisher Random House to record profits, the company gave every employee a $5000 bonus. This is just plain smart leadership.

5) Make your workplace fun. No, I don’t mean cheesy balloon-a-thons and annoying rah-rah rallies. This is about encouraging people to bring their personalities, quirks and passions to work. This leads to an increasingly seamless work/life mesh, a sense that people can really be themselves at work. Games, laughter, fun are great stress relievers, they renew and refresh us, and build very real bonds between employees.

None of this is rocket science, in fact it’s Leadership 101. But like all simple truths, it bears repeating because it is so important. Talent simply won’t hang around in a cold, mechanical, stifling, repressive culture. Developing happy employees is what twenty-first century management is all about. And guess what? It makes leadership a lot more fun, too!

Update: An earlier version of this article stated that Simon & Schuster published Fifty Shades of Grey. It has been revised to say Random House was the publisher instead.

A version of this was first posted on Forbes.

Photo Credit: loyale99 via Compfight cc

Customer Experience Starts with Your Employees

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Providing a great customer experience creates sustainable competitive advantage and higher profits. Here’s why that starts with designing a great employee experience — and how to do that.

There’s a solid argument to be made that “customer experience” isn’t just another business buzzword. As products, stores, and services increasingly begin to look alike, customer experience will increasingly define and differentiate a brand. Features, quality, and even price are (relatively) easy to match. Customer experience — not so much.

The term is (almost) impossibly broad, covering potentially everything from design, packaging and promotion through the sales transaction, use, reliability, and customer service.

Is the product thoughtfully designed and easy to use? Is the service easy to get set up with, and (at least for the most part) reliable? Does the offering provide good value for the cost?

How easy is an organization to do business with? Do new customers feel welcomed? If something does go wrong with the product or service, can the issue be resolved quickly, pleasantly, with a minimum of hassle? Is it easy to get questions answered?

The objective of providing great customer service may seem too broad to be anyone’s responsibility. Actually, its scope makes it everyone’s responsibility.Every employee — not just those who are “customer-facing” — has a role to play in optimizing the customer experience, from design to assembly to marketing, installation, billing, repair, and anything else that can impact the customer’s experience with the product, service, store or brand.

Which is why providing a great customer experience starts inside the company, with providing a great employee experience. Research has shown that happy employees make for happy customers.

Part of this pertains to the interpersonal aspects of management. Managers who are responsive to workers and value them demonstrate to employees they should be responsive to and value the company’s customers. This is why enterprises like Zappos, Southwest Airlines and Marriott are known both for their highly engaged employee culture as well as great customer experiences.

But there are more practical elements to providing a great employee experience as well. For example:

Employee onboarding: is there a smooth, organized process in place to onboard new employees, so everything is in place for them to be productive from day one on the job?

Employee provisioning: are there systems in place for employee provisioning that make it easy for workers to obtain anything needed to do their jobs, from equipment to furnishings to office supplies?

Shared services: is it easy for employees to request services like system access, printer repair, PTO, getting a broken window fixed, etc.? Are back-end fulfillment processes automated to deliver internal shared services quickly?

Having solid processes and systems in place in these areas models the importance of optimizing the new customer onboarding process and being responsive to customer needs throughout their ownership and use of the product or service.

But it also makes employees more productive. By removing distractions and impediments to employees performing their job tasks, such processes and systems enable staff to focus their efforts on their role in creating a great customer experience (rather than “babysitting” their requests, managing cumbersome manual processes, or waiting for and wondering where the service tech is).

As choices in nearly every product and service category proliferate, providing a great customer experience is what will make brands stand out. Want to be one of the winners? Start by providing a great employee experience.

A version of this post was first published on Medium on 10/19/2015