Garry Ridge, who runs the chemical company WD-40, has a leadership style guided by two sources: Aristotle and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock.
“The joy of work brings perfection to the work,” Ridge first quoted a Greek philosopher.
Then he got a recent BlackRock note. “We found that companies that had strong ties with their employees had low sales and high profits across the pandemic,” Ridge read aloud.
He interrupted this with his own commentary: “Well, of course!”
Included in the bright blue and yellow canisters familiar to many homes with squeaky doors, WD-40 is a secret that can loosen rusty bolts, rub crayon from walls, and remove bug splatters from your car. It is a prescription cleaning product that removes rust from the bicycle chain. Ridge likes to remind nearly 600 employees in 17 offices about the usefulness of their work.
But he also believes that it is partly underpinned by the company’s unorthodox culture. WD-40 has no manager, only a coach. Workers can win the “Mother Teresa” award for giving the community “time, talent, treasure”. They may remind colleagues during the meeting to create “positive and lasting memories” together.
Long before the pandemic, many were skeptical of companies that advertised that they were in the business of keeping workers happy. There was a technology company with ball pits and slides in a college campus-style office. There was an office with a lunch buffet and frozen rosé. Surveys have increased the number of employers who value staff well-being and often contract with consultants to cook the fun of the workplace.
For some, the pursuit of workplace well-being, and associated price tags, is a corporate alchemy that seeks to turn emotions into productivity, like the $ 18,000 program for managers on how to lead a happy team. It may look like. Sometimes you may feel like smiling and setting aside inconvenient requests for your boss, such as working from home or getting a high salary.
These criticisms have taken on new urgency as workers and employers clash over plans to return to the office, which economists continue to characterize as a tight labor market. Some workers say they prefer flexibility over corporate carrots, such as Lizzo concerts for Google employees and beer tasting at Microsoft, or prefer to raise them in response to inflation.
“It’s not going to help you schedule your schedule in advance in a way that helps you, but here’s a discount code,” said the Global Foundation, which has long held wine. Program Officer Jessica Martinez, 46, said Wednesday, now distributing office return gifts such as water bottles.
Revival of reinstatement plan
It looks like a new RTO chapter is now open after the Omicron variant shattered the company’s hopes of returning to face-to-face work at the end of last year.
“People are trying to get everything back to’normal’, but some say the truth is normal,” she continued, referring to returning to office planning more broadly than her own organization. She said, “Why don’t you give people what you really want?”
In some workplaces, “happiness” means allowing employees to choose their boss. It can mean getting rid of performance valuations. It also usually means measuring happiness levels, but not everyone agrees on what happiness means. See Dalai Lama, Dale Carnegie Barbara Ehrenre-like for beginners.
Behavioral economists and psychologists have shown employers in recent years that there are business cases for sticking to positiveness. According to a study by the Journal of Labor Economics, people given comedies that look like chocolate to eat (general happiness producers) were 12% more productive than the group left alone. Another study from the Journal of Financial Economics shows that companies on the list of 100 best workplaces have higher shareholder returns than their peers.
“There is evidence that the causal arrow of happiness is wrong,” said cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, who teaches a popular course on happiness at Yale University. “You think,’I’m happy because I feel productive at work and things are going well at work.'” However, the evidence seems to suggest that other arrows also exist. Happiness can really affect the performance of your work. “
Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, said the idea that businesses should care about happiness arose with an increase in non-manual work. Managers feel motivated as employees find it harder to measure some work outcomes, such as shifting to the quality and quantity of ideas rather than the number of pins manufactured or the number of tops screwed into a tube of toothpaste. I decided that I needed to be able to. Rewards were important, but so was the way people felt at work.
However, many are aware of the risks of workers who believe their employers are fostering emotional relationships with them, even though the relationship is really about money.
“Your boss isn’t there to provide you with happiness,” said Sarah Jaffe, author of “Work doesn’t love you.” “Even though they focus on happiness, they focus on profit.”
“Someone is rewarded for bringing about this new and exciting culture of workplace well-being,” Jaffe added. “I want to know how much my boss is using.”
Happy Ltd., a UK consultancy, calls the program it runs for senior leaders the Happy MBA. It costs about $ 18,000 and participants receive a certificate through the Institute of Leadership and Management, rather than an actual degree. In a recent session, nonprofits and company managers exchanged tips, such as letting employees choose their boss.
Woohoo, a Danish company that helps create happiness staff surveys, and its software partner, Heartcount, usually refused to share due to significant fluctuations in Woohoo founder Alexander Kjerulf, in addition to consulting fees. We charge the company about $ 4 per employee per month.
Woohoo and Heartcount consult with psychologists and statisticians to ensure that their assessment is not logical and focuses on people’s emotional response to their work. The weekly survey emailed on Friday includes questions such as: Have you been praised for doing a great job lately? Woohoo then helps employers interpret the data.
However, this data raises a unique set of questions that are more slippery than those normally covered by online surveys. What does it mean to be happy?
Kjerulf defines it as the degree to which people experience positive emotions when thinking about work at work or during personal time. WD-40 leaders understand that it involves a meaningful combination of work and attribution.
Another workplace valuation company, Culture Amp, works with about 4,500 companies and does not believe in measuring happiness at all, but instead favors indicators such as engagement and happiness. Its leaders view happiness as an instability that varies from person to person and is primarily beyond the control of the employer.
“I’m impressed with the emotions behind it, but it’s difficult to measure,” said Myra Cannon, People Science Director at Culture Amp. “Happiness is fleeting.”
One of the companies supported by Woohoo is Vega, a Serbian software developer. Vega publishes a monthly newsletter called Happiness Central. This is intended to “excessively convey our achievements.” Twice a year, the “Meme War” rewards employees for creating “teasing C-level people” memes in-house. The CEO can surprise everyone who walks through the door with a fruit salad.
Vega’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Sasa Popovich, said: “We can expect people to be more actively involved, and eventually our clients will be better served and satisfied with our work.”
However, these office relationships do not pay workers’ invoices. Criticism is increasing as happiness becomes equipment inside the conference room.
“In the early days, many start-ups brought terrible profits to people and abused their employees. They tried to overcome it by eating light meals in the kitchen,” said Foundation officer Martinez. .. But she said the labor shortage is empowering more workers to say they don’t tolerate what they once did.
“You’ve treated people so badly that vacancies can’t be filled,” she said.
The flexibility of working from home makes it more comfortable for some workers to tell their employers what really makes them happy. You are free to spend time with your family, not a free dinner in the office.
“Bringing grain in the break room doesn’t make up for not being able to pick up your child,” says Anna King, 60, a parent at an energy company in Portland, ore. Her employees feel she is part of the team. Is she not because she’s playing ping pong together, but because she’s achieved her real goals and working the right amount of time? “
Focusing on happiness can be distracting, as millions of workers make bold demands on employers, especially with regard to lasting flexibility. After all, the “Mother Teresa” award does not improve the condition of workers and, in fact, may encourage workers to spend more time on the corporate community at the expense of their personal lives. ..
Heidi Sirholtz, President of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, said: “But they are not a substitute for decent wages, decent profits, and decent schedules.”