Why The Best Companies Are A Blast to Work At

Stephan Meier shares 5 key insights from The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive

Is your workplace fun? It may seem like a frivolous question, but research suggests that companies that focus on their employees’ happiness not only experience lower turnover, they also get more productivity and innovation. So while swaggering CEOs may get all the attention, a surer path to profit might be making sure your workers are truly engaged.

That’s part of the argument Stephan Meier makes in the new book The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive. Stephan is a behavioral economist, the James Gorman Professor of Business Strategy, and the Chair of the Management Division at Columbia Business School. Scroll down to listen to five of his key insights.

The 5 Key Insights:

1. Employees are the new customers.

2. More than money motivates work.

3. Personalize the workplace.

4. Tech is easy, humans are hard.

5. An intentional workplace makes business thrive.

1. Employees are the new customers.

Customers got a seat at the table with the shift from product to customer-centricity. At Amazon, Jeff Bezos would literally have an empty chair at important meetings that was reserved for “the customer.” Important trends led to the increased focus on customer needs and made the companies that shifted successful.

Now, the same trends that led to customer-centricity are leading to employee-centricity. Empowering employees in an agile environment is becoming more important. Transparency is increasing in terms of employee experience and corporate culture. More data allows for a more personalized employee experience; a one-size-fits-all approach does not work anymore. Lastly, shifting attitudes about brand or company values affect a more employee-centric approach.

Employees are the new customers because focusing on employees can create win-win situations, as with customer-centricity. Employees win by having a better experience and companies win by getting higher productivity, more innovation, lower turnover, and improved customer experience. This ends with more profits and a competitive advantage: the employee advantage.

“The same trends that led to customer-centricity are leading to employee-centricity.”

Employee-centricity is, therefore, the new customer-centricity. Tools for customer-centricity can be productively used to put workers first. For example, the key to customer-centricity is getting customer insights. The same tools that get customer insights can be used to get employee insights. Or customer-centricity is not about lowering prices but rather is about improving customer experience. In fact, we can increase prices because of a better customer experience. Similarly, employee-centricity does not necessarily mean increasing wages but improving the employee experience. To do that, organizations must understand what motivates people to work beyond their paycheck.

Hear Stephan’s ideas for how to motivate your workforce: