Top HR and Company Culture News of the Week

The best of this week's news includes two articles on one of our favorite terms, "happiness", and another piece on a company that has mastered happiness in the workplace. Google's amazing culture as profiled by Roger Philby should be an inspiration for all companies. Their focus on the satisfaction of not only their customers, but their employees, has benefitted their brand, work culture, and their bottom line. Here's to more happiness in the workplace!

For the fourth year in a row, Fortune magazine has voted Google as the best company to work for. Roger Philby recently wrote a piece detailing what makes Google such a great place to work. For starters, he credits their amazing culture, which is reinforced by the current employees devotion to it, and in turn, the effect that devotion has on future candidates. Google's incredibly strong brand is also a huge part of why it's such a desirable place to spend one's day. Google is clearly doing a lot right to be crowned this many years in a row.

The importance of happy employees is gaining more and more traction now that many academics are researching workplace satisfaction. Beyond the general benefit of feeling good, ensuring happiness among employees is great for business sense. Della Bradshaw's recent piece on this subject covered much of the recent academic research on this topic. She quoted psychologist Prof. Scollon as saying, "Research shows that happy people earn morem money, are healthier (spend fewer days out of the office sick) [and] are more creative at problem solving." The rest of the piece has many more examples of the scientific proof behind promoting happiness in the workplace.

Continuing on the happiness trend, Marla Kaplowitz's recent piece in Adweek discussed the "Happiness Effect", or how happy employees result in happy customers. While focusing on employee happiness is relatively easy for newer businesses, as business and revenues grow, the focus tends to shift to the bottom line. She wrote, "Excellent leaders ultimately know they’ve got it right when people enjoy coming to work and feel part of a team that “gets it,” an organization where people lead, rather than manage, and everyone feels connected to a common vision and a shared goal of delivering innovative and inspired work." Employee feedback, recognition, and individual rewards are a few ways to help shift happiness to where it belongs: center stage in a company's core values.

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