Creating a Great Place to WorkAs the economy rebounds businesses are focusing on making their organizations better places to work. They are realizing if employees and managers are unhappy, they are going to leave. Pay and benefits are important, but many people are choosing happiness, meaningful work and job satisfaction as the most important criteria as to whether they stay or go. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose has created a great place to work. They have no problem attracting and retaining good people. Zappos does not hire just anyone looking for a job. They place emphasis on hiring the right kind of people. By hiring the right people, they reduce turnover, training costs and insure their team of Zapponians stay motivated and passionate about what they do. According to their human resource department, it is harder to get a job at Zappos than to be accepted at Harvard Business School. The strategies and concepts they apply at Zappos have had a significant impact. Great places to work are more productive and more profitable than their peers. While most organizations have suffered during the recession, Zappos has been growing at a record pace. The Zappos vision statement is, “Delivering happiness to our customers, vendors and employees.” Creating “happiness” is not just an altruistic thing to do. It has a huge impact on the bottom line. Happiness has created unparalleled customer loyalty to the extent 80% of their customers return to purchase again. In creating a great place to work, consider the following strategies: 1) Give people a higher calling and a purpose for working. 2) Deploy a leadership strategy. 3) Manage your managers and make them lead by example. 4) Hire the RIGHT people. 5) Tear down walls and eliminate barriers that rob people of pride. 6) Create a work place that engages and inspires employees. 7) Retain your top people. 8) Capture and manage ideas and suggestions. 9) Customer and market focus. 10) Measure performance. Gregory P. Smith, MS | |
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The Great Workplace Building Trust and Inspiring PerformanceResearch proves it. The “best companies to work for” are more productive and more profitable than their stock market peers. But a great workplace is not something that can be achieved in a quarter, or even a year. For a great workplace to exist, employees must trust the organization implicitly, take pride in what they do, and be inspired to achieve superior performance. And that requires a different breed of leadership—leaders who know how to instill and reinforce these beliefs in every communication, every decision, and every interaction. It requires leaders who realize how they act and do what they do makes a world of difference to employees.More information | |