I took up a full time assignment last year, and as a part of it I’m working with a small team from an outsourced company. This team is usually happy, productive, and collaborative. Over the months, I realized that that company has lower rates of attrition. Many employees are working there for the last 6-7 years (it is usually 2-3 years for the software service companies in India ). The salaries are NOT exceptionally high in that company, yet the attrition is significantly lower. In the conversations I learnt that employees are happy due to the work-culture. Their own preferences, and work-life balance are respected there. More than money, the work-culture keeps them there, happily.
What keeps employees happy?
Here are some helpful insights in this short video (just 4 mins) from Michael C. Bush – he helps organizations to become better workplaces. This is how he puts it about building organizational culture where employees are happy, more productive –
The miracle thing is, you don’t have to spend more money to make this (building better work-culture) happen. It’s not about ping-pong tables and massages and pet walking. It’s not about the perks. It’s all about how they’re treated by their leaders and by the people that they work with.
He shares three ideas (with examples, elaborations) that the organizations can implement for happier work culture. Watch his suggestions here –
Why we work?
I had written a long review/article about this book. If you’re keen about building great work-culture, or organizational development as such, please go through this 2-parts series –
Schwartz mentions Barbara Fredrickson’s work Positivity referring to its central insight that when people are experiencing positive emotions, they think expansively & creatively, which obviously produces better work. Better work in turn creates more positive emotions, which in turn promotes better work and so on. Thus, positivity nurtures itself. Schwartz calls it a Virtuous Cycle!
Schwartz suggests that head of organizations can ask themselves:
➤ “How can I make my business better by restructuring my employees’ jobs?”
You may also browse through this book itself here –
Featured Image:
The featured image used in this post is by Infoniqa_com from Pixabay, and I’m using it here with gratitude.
There is this book ‘Reinventing Organizations’ by Frederic Laloux that talks about completely transforming organizations for a better work culture. It would be great if you can also cover that one 🙂
Let me check that book…
Here is a wonderful example of “Good Work” from the software development company – Cliniko. See how Joel Friedlaender has built is work culture around “trust” – and how it is helping him grow the company.