Home Advice How Do Companies Make Their Workers Both Happy And Productive?

How Do Companies Make Their Workers Both Happy And Productive?

They say that you can either make the people who work for you happy, or you can make them productive: never both. But is that really true? Or can your employees have their cake and eat it too?

There are plenty of examples of businessmen who have tried to achieve both. Take Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, for instance. His whole business model is based on keeping workers happy so that they become more productive. Workers are paid both in dollars and work perks, like day care for their kids. The idea is that once a person joins the company, many of their needs are met.

Or what about Larry Page? His business, Google, has done everything it can to manipulate the working environment to make it feel less like work and more like fun. Google offices all over the world come equipped with slides, games rooms and squash courts. What’s more, Page has tried to make Google as “horizontal” as possible, shirking managerial layers for open collaboration between colleagues from different areas. As such, Google has a “startup feel” – something which is unusual for many large companies.

So how can you make your employees happy and productive at the same time? Take a look at some of these ideas

Trust Your Employees To Get Out Of Their Comfort Zones

Some leaders are afraid of giving their employees new responsibilities. But enabling employees to do different things is important if you want to keep them happy. Few people want to go to work, day after day, and do the same task until they burn out, retire or die. They want to be challenged in new ways and have new projects to think about. Granting them new responsibilities will help them to become more confident, and they’ll feel more valued in your organization.

Getting employees to do new things can seem like a big risk for many managers. But allowing workers to take on new roles helps to avoid them getting bored, which is a major problem for many businesses.

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Keep Your Team Up To Date

Corporate team building events are a good opportunity to make sure that your team is kept informed about the progress of your business. Often the business leadership has the bigger picture on the direction that the company is taking, but the workers themselves are in the dark. Many companies just assume that how the company is doing is common knowledge, but that information rarely percolates down beyond managerial level. To keep workers happy and feeling secure, it’s a good idea to talk to them about the state of the company and what new products are coming down the pipeline in the years ahead.

Perks Are Important, But Not As Important As You Think

Some companies have received a lot of attention in the press, thanks to their lavish job perks. But are things like onsite massages and childcare facilities really that important? The evidence suggests that there are important, but not as much as many business owners think. More important is understanding workers’ perspectives and being empathetic.