Thomas Robb, transformational speaker and life coach, says it’s common knowledge that happy staff equals happy customers, and asks… but what makes for happy staff? The answer is simple: “A positive workplace environment!”
Creating a positive workplace environment stems from each company’s values! Those values come from senior management – it’s a top-down approach that works like this…
Start at the beginning
Company values create a happy and positive workplace environment. In turn, this creates happy staff, happy staff create happy customers, and happy customers create more happy customers! This then moves back up the chain from customers, to staff, to workplace environment, to company values and then to management!
The better this cycle works, the greater your business’s chance of achieving its vision and mission, and, as discussed earlier, more customers will come your way. Most importantly, though, it breeds happier, healthier staff.
This is because everybody talks! It has a ripple effect that impacts anyone who comes into contact with it… whether firsthand or through word of mouth. Think about it – if staff are going home feeling seen, heard and validated for their efforts, and then someone asks them “hey, how was your day?” – they’re going to reply with “OMFG! Amazing!!!! AHHHHHHH my job is SO GOOD!… My boss is awesome, my coworkers are friendly, and it’s just the greatest!”
This undoubtedly trickles down to customers who, in turn, not only continue coming back but also tell their friends and family about the positive experience they had.
It’s worth noting that the opposite is also true… and what’s interesting is that the ripple effect of a negative workplace environment has a larger impact than the positive one. This is because there is a broader psychological phenomenon: many more positive everyday experiences occur than negative ones, but because of cognitive tendencies (e.g. “negativity bias”), negative ones often stand out more. This means that your staff and customers are likely to tell more people about their negative experiences than about their positive ones. The reason? Biologically, we are geared for survival and thus are unconsciously on the lookout for any and all threats.
Think about it. You might tell between two and four people about your positive experience (regardless of what it was), but if you experience something negative, you’ll tell double the number of people with more fire in your voice, and what do they do… They lean in fully and listen with a look of concern on their face! They feed your story and validate your experience by saying things like “NO WAY”, “THEY DID WHAT?!” or “YOU ARE KIDDING ME”!!!
In pursuit of happiness
“The saying I want you to remember is this: If everyone were happy just the way they were, it wouldn’t be good for business. Mental health issues have been on the rise for a long time, and I believe it is because businesses across the board put profit over people! As long as it keeps happening, so too will the mental health epidemic,” Tom says.
“Even high schools are more worried about the overall score they get published in the papers than about their students’ social and emotional well-being. I know this firsthand as I was politely asked to leave my private school education in year 11 after having been there since prep – not because I was a bad kid, but because my low scores were bringing down the overall average, and to them, it didn’t look good for business,” Tom adds.
The bottom line
So after all that, how do you do it? How do you create a positive workplace environment?
It’s easy… listen to your staff, pay them what they’re worth, acknowledge them for their efforts and do things like weekly work catch-ups, social events, bingo nights, put out a cheese board on a Friday night with some good wine, invite staff to a weekly morning nature walk, or beach clean up… The byproduct of this will inevitably be healthier relationships between staff which is genuinely awesome!
Prioritise the people, not your pocket and everything else will fall into place.
