【英语财经】员工多开心，企业好赚钱 Happy workplaces help companies perform better

Companies with a reputation for strong employee engagement and creating a happy workplace generate good publicity and cachet for their chief executives. But these companies are finding that what makes a great employer can also lead to business success.

In fact, the link between employee attitudes and business performance has been known for decades. A series of influential experiments from the 1930s, known as the Hawthorne studies, showed the impact of improved workplace environments on overall factory outputs. One finding was that reducing the working day by half an hour saw productivity improve.

Later, James Worthy, a sociologist-turned-executive, wrote in 1950 of increased autonomy for employees leading to improved morale and productivity.

While some have argued that successful companies make employees happy, not the other way round, academic studies have steadily discredited this view.

One of the most comprehensive studies on the topic is Gallup’s 2012 research of 192 organisations in 49 industries and 34 countries, covering 50,000 business units and 1.4m employees. It found that business divisions scoring in the top half of reported employee engagement had nearly double the performance outcomes compared with those in the bottom half.

The authors concluded: “Financial performance is best viewed as a downstream outcome … Employees with positive attitudes toward their workplace are likely to carry those attitudes over to customers and to engage in the discretionary effort it takes to serve … at a high level.”

Yves Morieux, director for the Boston Consulting Group’s Institute for Organization, believes the debate is now over. “Happy employees create high-performing organisations … because there are more opportunities to satisfy their aspirations, job security, chance of promotion, career development [and] wages,” he says. “That is obvious … if the company is very productive but does not maintain satisfaction at work then in a few years performance will drop.”

But many employers have yet to cotton on. Employee engagement and happiness at work is in decline. Separate studies by the Conference Board, Gallup and Quantum Workplace found that employee engagement has been falling for the past decade or more. Mr Morieux attributes this to a “proliferation of cumbersome processes, systems, scorecards, metrics, meetings — what I call ‘complicatedness’. People spend between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of their time wasting their time, working on less and less value-added activity.”

By contrast, best practice employers are “turning the engagement process into a lot more than an annual event,” says Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist for workplace management and wellbeing. “They embed it in how people think about their day-to-day work … education and training, development that focuses on the natural talents and strengths in the team. Helping people feel like they are the future of the organisation and helping them do what they do best.”

Teamwork and collaboration are consistently linked to increases in innovation and discretionary effort, shaping how some companies now think about reward packages. “You must be very careful with reward and bonuses,” says Mr Morieux, “because if the bonus is very significant then your goal becomes to earn the bonus. And then you will do everything you can to earn the bonus, including hiding, exaggerating and why not cheating? These strong incentives are counterproductive if you want people to co-operate.”

Netflix, the digital broadcaster, pays only salary and not bonuses. It allows staff to choose their working hours.

A seemingly dull set of 124 PowerPoint slides outlining Netflix’s employment culture has become a surprise viral hit, now viewed close to 14m times.

Mr Morieux believes the Netflix model has become “an archetype”. He adds: “The Netflix values include management that is about ‘context, not control’, creating the right environment that inspires people, that provides direction and transparency — as opposed to top-down decision making, approvals processes and committees.”

Lego, the Danish toy manufacturer, also credits employee empowerment as central to its success. The Lego group chief executive, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, is widely quoted as saying “blame is not for failure, it is for failing to help or to ask for help”.

Mr Morieux says: “When you use this principle it changes everything because suddenly it becomes in people’s interest to be as transparent as possible about their real weaknesses, their real forecast, as opposed to hiding or protecting themselves … The way [Lego] describe it is, ‘don’t think less of yourself, but think of yourself less’. This is precisely to promote co-operation.”

Lego, along with the likes of Google and WL Gore, a US manufacturing company, has a flat management structure. Layers of management are effectively stripped out, leaving only the employees, a cadre of team leaders and the executive team. WL Gore’s 10,000-plus employees are divided into self-managing teams of eight to 12 people who set their own work and pay. Staff also to elect the company’s chief executive.

What does this say, then, for the future of managers? Yves Duhaldeborde, director of organisational surveys and insights at consultants Towers Watson, argues that managers — the ones that are left, at least — actually become even more important in flatter structures.

“What people need from managers is not someone they get permission from, but the person who coaches and gives meaningful feedback,” he says. “Good people management is key to having happy people in an organisation.”

The best managers build “a sense of trust and autonomy” in teams, adds Mr Harter of Gallup. “Getting that right leads to higher performance.”

那些素以员工归属感强烈和工作环境和谐著称的公司，为其首席执行官的形象和名声加分。出人意料的是，这些公司正日益发现，使其成为绝佳雇主的那些东西，也能为其带来商业上的成功。

事实上，数十年前人们就已经知道了员工态度和企业业绩之间的关联。从上世纪30年代开始的一系列具有影响力的实验——名为“霍桑研究”(Hawthorne studies)——表明了改善工作环境对工厂总产量的影响。一项发现是，工作日工作时长减少半个小时，可以提高生产效率。

后来，由社会学家转行担任高管的詹姆斯?沃西(James Worthy)在上世纪50年代写道，提高员工自主性可以提升士气和生产效率。

尽管有人认为，是企业经营成功让员工感觉愉悦，而不是反过来，但是学术研究反复证明，这个观点是错误的。

对于该论题最为全面的研究之一，是盖洛普(Gallup) 2012年对34个国家、49个行业的192家企业所做的研究，对象覆盖50000个部门的140万名员工。研究发现，员工归属感得分排在前半部分的业务部门的业绩表现，几乎是排在后半部分的业务部门的两倍。

该研究的作者总结称：“最好将财务业绩视为后续的结果……喜欢自己工作环境的员工很可能会把这种态度带给他们的客户，并做出分外的付出，这种付出是让工作表现达到……高水准所必须的。”

波士顿咨询公司(Boston Consulting Group)企业研究所(Institute for Organization)的伊夫?莫里厄(Yves Morieux)认为，如今这场论辩已有定论。“快乐的员工会创造出业绩优异的企业……因为这样的企业更有机会满足其员工的抱负，保障他们工作的稳定，提供晋升机会、职业发展前景以及令人满意的薪资待遇，”他称，“这是显而易见的……如果一家公司效益很好，但是没能保持员工对工作的满意度，那么要不了几年该公司的业绩就会下滑。”

但是，很多雇主还没能理解这一点。员工归属感以及工作满意度正在下滑。世界大型企业联合会(Conference Board)、盖洛普以及Quantum Workplace分别通过研究发现，过去十多年来，员工归属感一直在不断下滑。莫里厄把这种现象归咎于“越来越多的繁琐流程、体制、记分卡、标准和会议——我称之为‘没事找事’。员工40%至60%的工作时间都浪费在越来越不产生价值的活动上。”

相比之下，做得最好的雇主“构建员工归属感的方式已远不止是每年办一场年会，”盖洛普研究职场管理和福利问题的首席科学家吉姆?哈特(Jim Harter)称，“他们把员工归属感的构建融入到人们对日常工作的看法中、融入到员工教育和培训中、融入到对团队成员天赋和优势的关注以及相应的调整中。他们让员工感觉自己是企业的未来，帮助员工去做自己最擅长的事情。”

团队协作和合作始终与提高创新力和增加分外的付出联系在一起，这改变了一些企业现在对奖励方式的想法。“你必须非常谨慎地制定奖励和奖金安排，”莫里厄称，“因为如果奖金比例突出，那么你的目标就成了拿到奖金。然后你会尽一切努力去拿奖金，包括隐瞒问题、夸大业绩、还会考虑作假。如果你希望员工加强合作，那设定力度太大的奖励机制会适得其反。”

网络视频公司Netflix只发固定薪水，不设奖金。它允许员工自主选择工作时长。

勾勒出Netflix职场文化的124张看似平淡的幻灯片意外在网络上走红，如今的浏览量已经接近1400万次。

莫里厄认为，Netflix模式已经成为了“一种典型”。他补充称：“Netflix所代表的价值观包括，创造一种基于‘氛围、而非控制’的管理方法，建立合适的环境，去激励员工，提供正确的导向以及透明的工作流程——与自上而下的决策机制、审批流程和委员会制度正好相反。”

丹麦玩具制造商乐高(Lego)也认为员工赋权是造就其成功的核心原因。乐高集团首席执行官约尔根?维格?克努斯托普(J?rgen Vig Knudstorp)说，“应该责怪的不是失败，而是没能提供帮助或寻求帮助”，这句话被广泛引用。

莫里厄称：“当你应用这条原则时，一切都会改变，因为突然间，尽可能清楚地展示出自己真实的弱点和实际的预测变得对他们有利了……用（乐高的）话来说就是，‘不要小看自己，但也不要老想着自己’。这正是为了促进团队合作。”

乐高与谷歌(Google)、美国制造公司WL Gore等类似企业一样，拥有扁平化的组织结构。有效剥离了管理层级，只留下员工、团队领导骨干和高层。WL Gore的1万多名员工被划分成不同的自主管理团队，每队8-12人，自己制定工作计划和薪酬方案。员工还自己选出公司的首席执行官。

那么，这预示着管理者的未来会如何呢？咨询公司韬睿惠悦(Towers Watson)企业调查和洞察主管伊夫?杜阿尔德博尔德(Yves Duhaldeborde)认为，在扁平化的组织结构中，管理者——至少是剩余的那些管理者——实际上会变得更重要。

“人们需要的管理者不是那些给予他们批准的人，而是那些可以提供指导和有效反馈的人，”他称，“良好的人事管理是让员工工作愉悦的关键。”

盖洛普的哈特补充称，最好的管理者会在团队中营造出“信任和自主管理的感觉”。“处理好这一点可以提高企业业绩。”

译者/马柯斯