Happiness

When you run a business or a component of a business, you are responsible for the people that work for you. You are responsible for their happiness and satisfaction for their lives at work, to some degree. Each person is responsible for their own happiness. However, you will have a lot to do with the environment in which they spend a significant part of their waking hours.

If you own a business or run a portion of a business, you can develop a culture that;

• supports
• educates
• develops people

There are many books written about culture. It is up to you to place the importance on the employees’ environment. In a great culture, a happy employee will be far more productive and supportive to the business. Developing an employee centric culture is effective in helping your employees build a passion for your business.

Steps to Culture Improvement:

Survey your employees to get a benchmark of employee satisfaction

Put together a team of employees- the culture initiative team

Have the team create a means for rewarding good customer service behavior, Customers include internal and external people. Your employees are your customers.

Develop a theme related to the business. Make it fun.

Create a process for monitoring the rewards to ensure that employees are recognized and rewarded. Sometimes a scratcher or a gas card is a great reward.

Give the team time to meet on a monthly basis to manage the culture process

Have meeting minutes with key topics to monitor the team progress. One of the team members should create the minutes and distribute them to the team members immediately after the meeting.

Survey the employees annually to determine effectiveness of the program

Realize that you will not be able to please everyone

You have a culture, intentional or not. Make your business culture an environment where employees can thrive.