Are Happy Workers More Productive?
Productivity in the workplace is linked to happiness because individual employees in an organization matter and their work has an impact. This boils down to employees being engaged in their relevant work and in the process making progress. Many companies overly focus on what they do, which translates down to minimizing and overlooking their employees. As well as why and how they are doing the work. However, employees’ skills and abilities should also be considered apart from other aspects such as job security and financial stability. The bottom line is that employees need to continue growing in order to remain productive and engaged.
The personal mantra of many employees is doing the work they love in the place or company they love and with people they enjoy engaging with professionally. The challenges that come with such mantras relates to understanding what they mean and pursuing the available opportunities. Finding such type of work is hard yet life gets busy with all its demands. Ideally, we all get stuck in our traditional habits, relationships, and routines that limit our happiness even in the workplace environment (Preston, 2017). Many a times, this happens because we do not have the bandwidth to focus on our happiness and lack the ability to bring change in the workplace.
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Silicon Valley is one of the companies that have additional workplace ‘perks’ to offer their employees. The company looks at the lore of football tables, free gourmet meals for their employees, meditation rooms, electric bikes, and onsite haircuts among others (Pace, 2018). From Valley’s perspective, it is evident that companies are ready to go that extra mile and level in order to attract and retain their employees. However, such tactics are not the best, but culture of an organization is important because it looks at employees’ flexibility, work-life balance, benefits, and so on. These things help employees to be themselves in the workplace environment and thus, lead them to positively impact society.
The case of Silicon Valley shows the company’s positive organizational behavior (POB) due to its positively human resource strengths and psychological capacities. There POB can be developed, measured and managed effectively through the performance of their employees. POB is an aspect of positive psychology that uses scientific methodology in promoting and discovering factors that allow employees and organizations to thrive. As such, it is concerned with optimal functioning that consists of the value subjective experience level that fosters flow and happiness. This level also looks at fostering the well-being of its employees, satisfaction and even contentment. The future of employees becomes hopeful and optimistic because of the positive organizational behavior promoting happiness.
Recently, Google Corporation made large investments in the well-being of their employees. The findings showed that companies perform better when their employees are happier ( McGregor, 2015 ). In many instances, the happiness employees of given companies trickle down to productivity for the organization. The reason for their happiness is that their lives are well-balanced to cater for all their needs. Moreover, the communication channels present in organizations help employees in making sound decisions because they are stakeholders in operations of the company. Such activities are geared towards promoting company and personal goals. In the long run, such employees will be productive because their diverse needs have been met and they are happy in their workplace environment.
References
McGregor, J. (2015) "Why great places to work can also make great investments" The Washington Post , March 11, 2015
Pace, E. (2018). The big lesson Silicon Valley can learn about creating office culture. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/09/20/the-big- lesson- silicon-valley-can-learn-about-creating-office-culture/#7ca71f29103e
Preston, C. (2017). Promoting employee happiness benefits everyone. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/12/13/promoting-employee- happiness-benefits-everyone/#16156b8a581a
