According to Gallup Heathway, employees on a recent US survey who scored low on life satisfaction or happiness have a decrease in productivity by 15 days per annum; and employees who scored high on life satisfaction generate USD21 more in earnings per square foot of space, which translated into USD32 million in additional profits. Google concurs, reporting increased happiness scales in its organisation relating to a 37 percent rise in sales, 31 percent improvement in productivity and a 19 percent increase in task accuracy. Furthermore, South Africa ranks 90th out of 156 countries according to the United Nations World Happiness Report.
Makes you think, doesn't it? So how then do you as a manager create a high performance culture?
The work starts at the top. The key motivator of people performance in an organisation is the understanding of "why". Why am I doing the job I am doing? This is because people don't actually care only about the money. To feel motivated and give extra discretionary effort, and, thus, increase productivity, they have to understand and live their purpose in the organisation. Is it to create a safer world? Is it fundamentally to change the way that people live, work and play through structures and buildings? Is it to make a tangible difference to the world through creating greener, more environmentally friendly structures? Top management has the responsibility to decide on, and communicate, this effectively through the rest of the silos in the organisation, working together to live what it preaches and creatively and effectively communicate the "why".
Next, the top management team needs to look at itself: how are team members working together; what are their strengths, what are their areas of development and how can theybecome more self-aware, so that they can better manage themselves and, ultimately, their teams? And, finally, the work filters down to the man on the shop floor - how is he going to feel part of the organisation, involved, values, and effective in creating tangible results?
The bottom line, literally, is that successful organisations are made up of people who understand why they are doing what they are doing and understand their own potential and constantly perform to realise it. They're dynamic. They're positive and they drive the kind of high business performance that sets their companies apart. Given that most organisational costs lie in salaries, it makes seriously good business sense to invest in your people.
So the question to ask yourself really is not if you need to do this work with your people, but how soon.
