Artwork:
Yue Minjun,
Untitled, 2005, watercolor on paper, 140 x 127 cm
When
the economy’s in terrible shape, when any of us is lucky to have a
job—let alone one that’s financially and intellectually
rewarding—worrying about whether or not your employees are happy might
seem a little over the top. But in our research into what makes for a
consistently high-performing workforce, we’ve found good reason to care:
Happy employees produce more than unhappy ones over the long term. They
routinely show up at work, they’re less likely to quit, they go above
and beyond the call of duty, and they attract people who are just as
committed to the job. Moreover, they’re not sprinters; they’re more like
marathon runners, in it for the long haul.
So what does it mean to be happy in your job? It’s not about contentment,
which connotes a degree of complacency. When we and our research
partners at the Ross School of Business’s Center for Positive
Organizational Scholarship started looking into the factors involved in
sustainable individual and organizational performance, we found a better
word: thriving.
We think of a thriving workforce as one in which employees are not just
satisfied and productive but also engaged in creating the future—the
company’s and their own. Thriving employees have a bit of an edge—they
are highly energized—but they know how to avoid burnout.
Thriving employees are highly energized, but they know how to avoid burnout.
Across
industries and job types, we found that people who fit our description
of thriving demonstrated 16% better overall performance (as reported by
their managers) and 125% less burnout (self-reported) than their peers.
They were 32% more committed to the organization and 46% more satisfied
with their jobs. They also missed much less work and reported
significantly fewer doctor visits, which meant health care savings and
less lost time for the company.
We’ve identified two components of thriving. The first is vitality:
the sense of being alive, passionate, and excited. Employees who
experience vitality spark energy in themselves and others. Companies
generate vitality by giving people the sense that what they do on a
daily basis makes a difference.
The second component is learning:
the growth that comes from gaining new knowledge and skills. Learning
can bestow a technical advantage and status as an expert. Learning can
also set in motion a virtuous cycle: People who are developing their
abilities are likely to believe in their potential for further growth.
The
two qualities work in concert; one without the other is unlikely to be
sustainable and may even damage performance. Learning, for instance,
creates momentum for a time, but without passion it can lead to burnout.
What will I do with what I’ve learned? Why should I stick with this
job? Vitality alone—even when you love the kudos you get for delivering
results—can be deadening: When the work doesn’t give you opportunities
to learn, it’s just the same thing over and over again.
The
combination of vitality and learning leads to employees who deliver
results and find ways to grow. Their work is rewarding not just because
they successfully perform what’s expected of them today but also because
they have a sense of where they and the company are headed. In short,
they are thriving, and the energy they create is contagious.
About the Research
Over
the past seven years, we have been researching the nature of thriving
in the workplace and the factors that enhance or inhibit it.
Across
several studies with our colleagues Cristina Gibson and Flannery
Garnett, we surveyed or interviewed more than 1,200 white- and
blue-collar employees in an array of industries, including higher
education, health care, financial services, maritime, energy, and
manufacturing. We also studied metrics reflecting energy, learning, and
growth, based on information supplied by employees and bosses, along
with retention rates, health, overall job performance, and
organizational citizenship behaviors.
We developed a definition of thriving that breaks the concept into two factors: vitality—the sense that you’re energized and alive; and learning—the
gaining of knowledge and skills. When you put the two together, the
statistics are striking. For example, people who were high energy and
high learning were 21% more effective as leaders than those who were
only high energy. The outcomes on one measure in particular—health—were
even more extreme. Those who were high energy and low learning were 54%
worse when it came to health than those who were high in both.
How Organizations Can Help Employees Thrive
Some
employees thrive no matter the context. They naturally build vitality
and learning into their jobs, and they inspire the people around them. A
smart hiring manager will look for those people. But most employees are
influenced by their environment. Even those predisposed to flourish can
fold under pressure.
The
good news is that—without heroic measures or major financial
investments—leaders and managers can jump-start a culture that
encourages employees to thrive. That is, managers can overcome
organizational inertia to promote thriving and the productivity that
follows it—in many cases with a relatively modest shift in attention.
Ideally,
you’d be blessed with a workforce full of people who naturally thrive.
But there’s a lot you can do to release and sustain enthusiasm. Our
research has uncovered four mechanisms that create the conditions for
thriving employees: providing decision-making discretion, sharing
information, minimizing incivility, and offering performance feedback.
The mechanisms overlap somewhat. For instance, if you let people make
decisions but give them incomplete information, or leave them exposed to
hostile reactions, they’ll suffer rather than thrive. One mechanism by
itself will get you part of the way, but all four are necessary to
create a culture of thriving. Let’s look at each in turn.
Providing Decision-Making Discretion
Employees
at every level are energized by the ability to make decisions that
affect their work. Empowering them in this way gives them a greater
sense of control, more say in how things get done, and more
opportunities for learning.
The
airline industry might seem like an unlikely place to find
decision-making discretion (let alone a thriving workforce), but
consider one company we studied, Alaska Airlines, which created a
culture of empowerment that has contributed to a major turnaround over
the past decade. In the early 2000s the airline’s numbers were flagging,
so senior management launched the 2010 Plan, which explicitly invited
employee input into decisions that would improve service while
maintaining a reputation for timely departures. Employees were asked to
set aside their current perceptions of “good” service and consider new
ways to contribute, coming up with ideas that could take service from
good to truly great.
Agents
embraced the program, which gave them, for instance, the discretion to
find solutions for customers who had missed flights or were left behind
for any other reason. Ron Calvin, the director of the eastern region,
told us of a call he had recently received on his cell phone from a
customer he hadn’t seen or spoken to since working at the Seattle
airport, five years earlier. The customer had a three-month-old
grandchild who had just gone into cardiac arrest. The grandparents were
trying to get back to Seattle from Honolulu. Everything was booked. Ron
made a few calls and got them on a flight right away. That day the
grandfather sent Ron a text saying, simply, “We made it.”
Efforts
like this to meet individual needs without holding up flights have led
to a number one rating for on-time performance and a full trophy case.
The airline has also expanded considerably into new markets, including
Hawaii, the Midwest, and the East Coast.
Southwest
is a better-known story, largely because of the company’s reputation
for having a fun and caring culture. Flight attendants are often eager
to sing, joke around, and in general entertain customers. They also
radiate energy and a passion for learning. One decided to offer the preflight safety instructions in rap format.
He was motivated to put his special talents to work, and the passengers
loved it, reporting that it was the first time they had actually paid
attention to the instructions.
At
Facebook, decision-making discretion is fundamental to the culture. One
employee posted a note on the site expressing his surprise, and
pleasure, at the company’s motto, “Move fast and break things,” which
encourages employees to make decisions and act. On just his second day
of work, he found a fix to a complicated bug. He expected some sort of
hierarchical review, but his boss, the vice president of product, just
smiled and said, “Ship it.” He marveled that so early on he had
delivered a solution that would instantly reach millions of people.
The
challenge for managers is to avoid cutting back on empowerment when
people make mistakes. Those situations create the best conditions for
learning—not only for the parties concerned but also for others, who can
learn vicariously.
Sharing Information
Doing
your job in an information vacuum is tedious and uninspiring; there’s
no reason to look for innovative solutions if you can’t see the larger
impact. People can contribute more effectively when they understand how
their work fits with the organization’s mission and strategy.
Alaska
Airlines has chosen to invest management time in helping employees gain
a broad view of the company’s strategy. The 2010 Plan was launched with
traditional communications but also with a months-long road show and
training classes designed to help employees share ideas. The CEO, the
president, and the COO still go on the road quarterly to gather
information about the idiosyncrasies of various markets; they then
disseminate what they’ve learned. The benefits show up in yearly
measures of employee pride in the company—now knocking it out of the
park at 90%.
By the Numbers
27%
Blue-collar workers who scored high on thriving performed 27% better overall than their lower-thriving colleagues.
53%
Thriving blue-collar workers were 53% more likely to experience positive career progression than other employees.
16%
White-collar workers who scored high on thriving performed 16% better overall than peers with lower scores.
Implementation
of a more formal and meaningful open book policy was not easy. People
could look at the numbers, but they had little reason to pay attention
and didn’t get much insight into how the data related to their daily
work. For the first five or six years, the company struggled to build
the concept into its systems and routines and to wrap people’s minds
around what Baker calls “the rigor of the huddle”:
weekly gatherings around a whiteboard at which teams track results,
“keep score,” and forecast the next week’s numbers. Although people
understood the rules of open book management, at first they didn’t see
the point of adding yet another meeting to their busy schedules. It
wasn’t until senior leaders made huddling non-negotiable that employees
grasped the true purpose of the whiteboards, which displayed not just
financial figures but also service and food quality measures, check
averages, internal satisfaction figures, and “fun,” which could mean
anything from weekly contests to customer satisfaction ratings to
employees’ ideas for innovation.
Some
Zingerman’s businesses began instituting “mini games”: short-term
incentives to fix a problem or capitalize on an opportunity. For
instance, the staff at Zingerman’s Roadhouse restaurant used the greeter
game to track how long it took for customers to be greeted. “Ungreeted”
customers expressed less satisfaction, and employees found themselves
frequently comping purchases to make up for service lapses. The greeter
game challenged the host team to greet every customer within five
minutes of being seated, with a modest financial reward for 50 straight
days of success. It inspired hosts to quickly uncover and fix holes in
the service process. Service scores improved considerably over the
course of a month. Other Zingerman’s businesses started similar games,
with incentives for faster delivery, fewer knife injuries in the bakery
(which would lower insurance costs), and neater kitchens.
The
games have naturally created some internal tensions by delivering bad
news along with the good, which can be demoralizing. But overall they
have greatly increased frontline employees’ sense of ownership,
contributing to better performance. From 2000 to 2010 Zingerman’s
revenue grew by almost 300%, to more than $35 million; the company’s
leaders credit open book management as a key factor in that success.
Simple
anecdotes lend credence to their claim. For instance, a couple of years
ago we saw Ari Weinzweig give a talk at the Roadhouse. A guest asked
him whether it was realistic to expect the average waiter or busboy to
understand company strategy and finance. In response, Ari turned to a
busboy, who had been oblivious to the conversation: Would the teenager
mind sharing Zingerman’s vision and indicating how well the restaurant
was meeting its weekly goals? Without batting an eye, the busboy stated
the vision in his own words and then described how well the restaurant
was doing that week on “meals sent back to the kitchen.”
While
Zingerman’s is a fairly small business, much larger ones—such as Whole
Foods and the transportation company YRC Worldwide—have also adopted
open book management. Systems that make information widely available
build trust and give employees the knowledge they need to make good
decisions and take initiative with confidence.
Minimizing Incivility
The
costs of incivility are great. In our research with Christine Pearson, a
professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management, we discovered
that half of employees who had experienced uncivil behavior at work
intentionally decreased their efforts. More than a third deliberately
decreased the quality of their work. Two-thirds spent a lot of time
avoiding the offender, and about the same number said their performance
had declined.
Most people have experienced rude behavior at work. Here are a few quotes from our research:
“My
boss asked me to prepare an analysis. This was my first project, and I
was not given any instructions or examples. He told me the assignment
was crap.”
“My boss said, ‘If I wanted to know what you thought, I’d ask you.’”
“My
boss saw me remove a paper clip from some documents and drop it in my
wastebasket. In front of my 12 subordinates he rebuked me for being
wasteful and required me to retrieve it.”
“On speakerphone, in front of peers, my boss told me that I’d done ‘kindergarten work.’”
We have heard hundreds of stories, and they’re sadly familiar to most working people. But we don’t hear so much about the costs.
People
who have been the targets of bad behavior are often, in turn, uncivil
themselves: They sabotage their peers; they “forget” to copy colleagues
on memos.
Incivility
prevents people from thriving. Those who have been the targets of bad
behavior are often, in turn, uncivil themselves: They sabotage their
peers. They “forget” to copy colleagues on memos. They spread gossip to
deflect attention. Faced with incivility, employees are likely to narrow
their focus to avoid risks—and lose opportunities to learn in the
process.
A
management consultancy we studied, Caiman Consulting, was founded as an
alternative to the larger firms. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington,
in offices that are not particularly sleek, the firm is recognized for
its civil culture. Background checks in its hiring process include a
candidate’s record of civility.
“People
leave a trail,” says Caiman’s director, Greg Long. “You can save
yourself from a corrosive culture by being careful and conscientious up
front.” The managing director, Raazi Imam, told us, “I have no tolerance
for anyone to berate or disrespect someone.” When it does happen, he
pulls the offender aside to make his policy clear. Long attributes the
firm’s 95% retention rate to its culture.
Caiman
passes up highly qualified candidates who don’t match that culture. It
also keeps a list of consultants who might be good hires when an
appropriate spot opens up. The HR director, Meg Clara, puts strong
interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence among her prime criteria
for candidates.
At
Caiman, as at all companies, managers establish the tone when it comes
to civility. A single bad player can set the culture awry. One young
manager told us about her boss, an executive who had a habit of yelling
from his office, “You made a mistake!” for a sin as minor as a typo. His
voice would resonate across the floor, making everyone cringe and the
recipient feel acutely embarrassed. Afterward, colleagues would gather
in a common area for coffee and commiseration. An insider told us that
those conversations focused not on how to get ahead at the company or
learn to cope by developing a thick skin but on how to get even and get
out.
In
our research, we were surprised by how few companies consider
civility—or incivility—when evaluating candidates. Corporate culture is
inherently contagious; employees assimilate to their environment. In
other words, if you hire for civility, you’re more likely to breed it
into your culture.
Offering Performance Feedback
Feedback
creates opportunities for learning and the energy so critical for a
culture of thriving. By resolving feelings of uncertainty, feedback
keeps people’s work-related activities focused on personal and
organizational goals. The quicker and more direct the feedback, the more
useful it is.
The
Zingerman’s huddle, described earlier, is a tool for sharing
near-real-time information about individual as well as business
performance. Leaders outline daily ups and downs on the whiteboard, and
employees are expected to “own” the numbers and come up with ideas for
getting back on track when necessary. The huddles also include “code
reds” and “code greens,” which document customer complaints and
compliments so that all employees can learn and grow on the basis of
immediate and tangible feedback.
Quicken
Loans, a mortgage finance company that measures and rewards employee
performance like no other organization, offers continually updated
performance feedback using two types of dashboard—a ticker and kanban
reports. (Kanban, a Japanese word meaning “signal,” is used frequently in operations.)
The
ticker has several panels displaying group and individual metrics along
with data feeds that show how likely an employee is to meet his or her
daily goals. People are hardwired to respond to scores and goals, so the
metrics help keep them energized through the day; essentially, they’re
competing against their own numbers.
The
kanban dashboard allows managers to track people’s performance so that
they know when an employee or a team needs some coaching or other type
of assistance. A version of the kanban chart is also displayed on
monitors, with a rotating list of the top 15 salespeople for each
metric. Employees are constantly in competition to make the boards,
which are almost like a video game’s ranking of high scorers.
Employees
could feel overwhelmed or even oppressed by the constant nature of the
feedback. Instead, the company’s strong norms for civility and respect
and for giving employees a say in how they accomplish their work create a
context in which the feedback is energizing and promotes growth.
The
global law firm O’Melveny & Myers lauds the use of 360-degree
evaluations in helping workers thrive. The feedback is open-ended and
summarized rather than shared verbatim, which has encouraged a 97%
response rate. Carla Christofferson, the managing partner of the Los
Angeles office, learned from her evaluation that people saw her behavior
as not matching the firm’s stated commitment to work-life balance—which
was causing stress among employees. She started to spend more time away
from the office and to limit weekend work to things she could do at
home. She became a role model for balance, which went a long way toward
eliminating the worry of employees who wanted a life outside of work.
Individual Strategies for Thriving
Although
organizations benefit from enabling employees to thrive, leaders have
so much on their plates that attention to this important task can slip.
However, anyone can adopt strategies to enhance learning and vitality
without significant organizational support. And because thriving can be
contagious, you may find your ideas quickly spreading.
1. Take a break
In
our teaching, we let students design regular breaks and activities into
the class to ensure that they stay energized. In one term, students
decided to halt every class for two minutes at the midpoint to get up
and do something active. Each week a different foursome designed the
quick activity—watching a funny YouTube video, doing the cha-cha slide,
or playing a game. The point is that the students figure out what is
energizing for them and share it with the class.
You
can’t ignore the requirements of your job, but you can watch for
opportunities to make it more meaningful. Consider Tina, the staff
administrator of a policy think tank within a large organization. When
her boss took a six-month sabbatical, Tina needed to find a short-term
replacement project. After some scouting, she uncovered a budding
initiative to develop staff members’ ability to speak up with their
ideas about the organization. The effort needed an innovative spirit to
kick it off. The pay was lower, but the nature of the work energized
Tina. When her boss returned, she renegotiated the terms of her think
tank job to consume only 80% of her time, leaving the rest for the staff
development project.
3. Look for opportunities to innovate and learn
Breaking
out of the status quo can trigger the learning so essential to
thriving. When Roger became the head of a prestigious high school in the
Midwest, he was brimming with innovative ideas. He quickly ascertained,
however, that quite a few staff members were not open to new ways of
doing things. He made sure to listen to their concerns and tried to
bring them along, but he invested more of his efforts in the growth and
learning of those who shared his passion for breakthrough ideas.
Mentoring and encouraging them, Roger began to achieve small wins, and
his initiatives gained some momentum. A few of the resisters ended up
leaving the school, and others came around when they saw signs of
positive change. By focusing on those bright spots rather than the
points of resistance, Roger was able to launch an effort that is
propelling the school toward a radically different future.
4. Invest in relationships that energize you
All
of us have colleagues who may be brilliant but are difficult and
corrosive to work with. Individuals who thrive look for opportunities to
work closely with colleagues who generate energy and to minimize
interaction with those who deplete it. In fact, when we built the
research team to study thriving, we chose colleagues we enjoyed, who
energized us, with whom we looked forward to spending time, and from
whom we knew we could learn. At the Center for Positive Organizational
Scholarship, we seek to build good relationships by starting every
meeting with good news or expressions of gratitude.
5. Recognize that thriving can spill over outside the office
There’s
evidence that high levels of engagement at work will not lessen your
ability to thrive in your personal life but instead can enhance it. When
one of us (Gretchen) was dealing with her husband’s difficult medical
diagnosis, she found that her work, even though it was demanding, gave
her the energy to thrive professionally and in her family life. Thriving
is not a zero-sum game. People who feel energized at work often bring
that energy to their lives beyond work. And people inspired by outside
activities—volunteering, training for a race, taking a class—can bring
their drive back to the office.
The
four mechanisms that help employees thrive don’t require enormous
efforts or investments. What they do require is leaders who are open to
empowering employees and who set the tone. As we noted earlier, each
mechanism provides a different angle necessary for thriving. You can’t
choose one or two from the menu; the mechanisms reinforce one another.
For example, can people be comfortable making decisions if they don’t
have honest information about current numbers? Can they make effective
decisions if they’re worried about being ridiculed?
Creating
the conditions for thriving requires your concerted attention. Helping
people grow and remain energized at work is valiant on its own
merits—but it can also boost your company’s performance in a sustainable
way.
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