Happiness is Contagious, (and Profitable?)

After having gone a whole month without a blog entry (the reason for which, in itself, is another blog entry) I now find two items, back to back, that profoundly reinforce each other and the huge value of work-life.

I just finished writing a blog entry on the financial value of kindness (see link). The gist of that entry was content from Dr. William Baker showing how leaders who are kind to their employees obtain much higher results from those employees. The unanswerable question was whether the culture of harshness we have created over the past decade or two may have had a material contribution to the financial meltdown we are all now experiencing. My recommendation was for corporate leaders to leap at the chance to offer work-life skill training to their employees now, as a remedy for getting more productivity from employees who are facing tough times ahead.

On the heels of that entry, I was checking back through my notes and found this reference to a New York Times article on happiness (see link). This study, from the Harvard Medical School, followed people for 20 years and found that happiness is much more contagious than previously thought. Some highlights from the article:

• "Your happiness depends not just on your choices and actions, but also on the choices and actions of people you don’t even know who are one, two and three degrees removed from you" (quote from Dr. Nicholas Christakis, author of the study). Translated, that means morale matters.
  
  
• "If your friend’s friend’s friend becomes happy, that has a bigger impact on you being happy than putting an extra $5,000 in your pocket" (quote from James Fowler, co-author of the study). Translated, keeping employees happy can be more powerful than giving them a raise (though I can't think of too many folks who would turn down a raise these days).
  
  
• The happiness you get from others has a shelf life. The bounce you get lasts only a limited time. Translated, it's not just about making people happy once, but creating a culture where happiness is reinforced.
  
  
• A joyful coworker did not lift the spirits of colleagues, unless they were friends. Translated, that means if you have high turnover and nobody gets to be friends with anybody else, the effects of kindness would be nullified.

And of course, as with any good study there were detractors who say the results are suggestive at best, and cannot be taken as conclusive.

So what can we prove from all this, along with the book from Dr. Baker on the positive effects of kind treatment of employees? I don't know for sure. Buy my common sense tells me some things:

• Treating your employees like commodities can't be good. Hiding behind "globalization" as a euphemism for throwing people on the garbage heap when you think you can make a few more bucks is going to ultimately backfire.
  
  
• Finding inexpensive ways to provide meaningful kindness to employees has a large potential to do good.
  
  
• Whenever you find yourself in a tough spot, you need to fight the tendency to become harsh, as that will only exacerbate your problems. A little kindness will go a long way in such times.
  
  
• Looking for tangible methods with measurable results will be your best bet. CFOs are not going to be shelling out money these days. If you feel you need a "shot in the arm" for your employees, it better be something you can measure, something that has proven results, and something that can be tested.

At Dr. WorkLife, the only types of jobs we will take are ones which (1) are tied directly to the bottom line (2) which we can test, cheaply, with a pilot, and (3) which will have a positive projected business bottom line of overall cost reductions or new revenues. Of course, I'd love for everyone to buy from Dr. WorkLife, but no matter where you go, make sure you have a way to measure what you are doing.

Because while this new study shows that, apparently, it's good to be a nice guy after all, it's better to be a nice guy who makes a difference -- and can prove it.