4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

Employee problems get worse when they are ignored.

And while they are getting worse you can expect to see lower productivity, declining retention, higher turnover, and poor customer satisfaction. So what can be done?
The biggest challenge is admitting there is a problem. The second is doing something about it.

Based on our experience the only way to know for sure what is wrong is to measure it….you don’t want to take the word of your squeaky wheels, you want to hear from everyone what they think is really going on. Choosing an employee survey company may be a bit daunting since there are so many and we know you have a lot of choices for survey companies, so what are some of the things that you should look for in an employee survey company?

The Many Advantages of Working for a Highly Sensitive Person

As a leader, the greatest skill you can possess is the ability to earn, build and maintain trust. It may come as something of a surprise that the people best suited to be great leaders are those individuals who are known to be highly sensitive. In fact, some of the best leaders in business today, the ones who personify this valuable skill the most, are ‘highly sensitive’ people. In her article titled “8 Advantages Highly Sensitive People Bring to Business”, Sherrie Campbell celebrates the qualities that differentiate highly sensitive people from the masses and shares the reasons why they are the people you want running your business or being your boss or manager. In her own words, “An emotionally sensitive person is someone who creates environments in which employees are given the tools and resources to challenge the status quo, push boundaries and achieve growth”.

The 8 characteristics of these individuals who are known to make a difference include:
1. Emotional Awareness
2. Great Empathy
3. Dedication to fairness and justice
4. Leadership
5. Passion
6. Need time and space to themselves
7. Innovative
8. Generous

Learning to value our time over money is a key ingredient in job satisfaction

Benjamin Franklin is to blame. He is the one who coined the phrase ‘Time equals Money’ and started us all on the never-ending quest to work more to make more. But as so many research projects and real-life awakenings have shown, money can’t buy happiness, yet many of us can’t get past the idea that if we aren’t making money we are wasting our time.
People who work all the time, though, are quite often miserable, which is not just an observation, it is a fact.

In a recent study done at the University of Toronto, researchers found that people who look at their time as money had difficulty enjoying their free or leisure time and are, ‘ more likely to feel impatient when they’re not using it to earn money. And that hurts their ability to derive happiness during leisure activities’. Treating time as money “can actually undermine your well-being,” says Sanford DeVoe, one of two researchers at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management who carried out the study, which is to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The key finding of their research showed that people who think of their time as money experience time differently.

What if Employee Engagement became the norm and no longer the goal. 

Research shows success does not bring happiness. Happiness brings success.

 We all chase happiness. We all think we’ll be happy when we get that promotion, happy once we get that raise….Stop for a minute and think about how you feel while you are chasing those goals and what price you may be paying physically, emotionally or socially to achieve whatever we define as success. Some of us are chasing goals with so much discipline and drive we become fiercely determined, potentially causing real self-harm because we may eat poorly, get little sleep, pull excessive overtime at work, ignore family and friends, all to prove we deserve the next promotion because that is the goal. Research has shown, though, that getting the promotion only makes us feel happy for a short time until we find another loftier goal to pursue. We become like mice on a wheel spinning like crazy and going nowhere. Can that be considered living?

Shawn Anchor, author of The Happiness Advantage has developed a fascinating case for putting happiness first.
Anchor found that when you achieve a goal, you’re briefly happier… but then you’re looking toward the next big thing. That happy feeling doesn’t last. Anchor’s research showed that when you flip the formula and focus on increasing happiness instead of achieving the goal first, you end up increasing success.

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.

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.

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